Conservative lawmakers are calling on House leadership to vigorously act against President Obama’s executive amnesty.
Republican congressional leaders have yet to articulate what actions they plan to take to combat Obama’s recent unilateral actions to change immigration enforcement and policy in the U.S., including legalizing nearly 5 million illegal immigrants.
In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, seven center-right House Republicans lead by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) say they have a path forward and stressed the need to push back against what they say is “lawlessness.”
“It is important that we clearly communicate our complete and absolute rejection of the president’s illegal actions and layout our plan of how the Constitution grants Congress the ability to reign in this executive overreach,” Gosar said. “Our constituents want to know what we are going to do, so several members in the House and I developed three action items that we call on House leadership to take as soon as possible.”
The letter, signed by Gosar as well as Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Ted Poe (R-TX), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Bill Posey (R-FL), Steve Stockman (R-TX) and Paul Broun (R-GA), lays out a three-step plan, beginning with moving a short-term spending measure that defunds Obama’s executive orders.
The seven then want to pass an authorization to sue Obama over his actions and finally restrict all funding that would go toward providing work permits or green cards to illegal immigrants.
The conservative House members write that they believe Obama’s actions violate Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, that the president “…take care that the laws be faithfully executed…”
“There is too much at risk for this lawlessness to go unchallenged,” they write.
Meanwhile there is a new plan being circulated in leadership circles, according to The Hill, and being promoted by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) the soon-to-be chairman of the House Budget Committee, is the idea of a government spending measure that would only fund immigration services for a short time — or what is being called a “cromnibus.”
The “cromnibus,” The Hill reports, would fund the rest of the government through Sept. 2015, but kick the funding fight over immigration into the next Congress.
The House Appropriations Committee — which has argued that Congress cannot defund the agency tasked with implementing much of the executive order U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — plans to reveal its spending package the second week in December.
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