Sen. Pat Roberts: Block Funding for Obama Executive Amnesty

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) tells Breitbart News he supports a strategy by incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to cut off funding for President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty.

“The American people have just elected a new Senate majority to stop the misguided and liberal policies of the Obama Administration,” Roberts said in a statement emailed to Breitbart News. “The President’s attempts to grant amnesty through executive order will be the first battleground where this new Majority can stand up to this President and block his actions. I support Senator Sessions’ efforts to cut off funding for executive amnesty to protect the rule of law in America.”

Sessions says that Republicans can use government funding to deal with Obama’s planned executive amnesty.

First, if they insist on pushing a long-term omnibus spending bill through the lame duck Congress to fund the government through the rest of the 2015 fiscal year, Republicans could include language to block expenditure of tax dollars on Obama’s plans to grant work permits and other documents to illegal aliens. Or, Sessions says, Republicans could do a short-term funding bill so the government can pay its bills until January or February, when the new GOP Senate majority will be in office. At that point, early next year, it can block funding for the amnesty plans.

Sessions said on Wednesday that he thinks it would be more “smart” for Republicans to do the latter option, because on other matters it would keep outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from influencing spending policy on his way out the door.

“Sen. Reid shouldn’t be entitled to bind the country next year when we get a new Congress so I think that would be smart for a whole lot of reasons,” Sessions told reporters.

Roberts decision to back Sessions’ strategy comes after Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) backed it in an interview with Breitbart News in Baton Rouge earlier this week. Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-AL)—the Republican candidate who is likely to beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) in the Dec. 6 Senate runoff—said he’s favorable to Sessions’ strategies on these matters as well. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has offered support for it, as has Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Roberts just won a hard-fought re-election battle where he faced tough challenges in both his primary, against conservative Milton Wolf, and in his general election battle against liberal “independent” Greg Orman. One of the ways Roberts won his re-election battle was by focusing on Orman’s support for amnesty for illegal aliens.