Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, tells Breitbart News Daily about House Speaker Paul Ryan’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plans to force Americans to pay for President Obama’s Syrian refugee resettlement program.
“It’s going to be jammed through,” Sessions told host and Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Thursday morning on the show, which airs on SiriusXM the Patriot Channel 125. “Members of the Senate are very frustrated. We have no idea what the contested issues are [in a forthcoming omnibus spending bill] and how they’re going to be decided and who’s deciding.”
Sessions continued by noting that Congress is in this position in the first place because Democrats are blocking the appropriations process—but then Republican leadership going along with them by negotiating everything in the forthcoming omnibus spending bill in “secret.”
“It’s happening because the Democrats refuse to move the appropriations bills—13—we got one through,” Sessions told Bannon.
That leaves the vast majority of the federal government unfunded. It’s now in one piece of legislation. It’s being—Democrats complain about this or that and Republicans complain about this or that. And a group is meeting in secret agreeing to what will go in and what won’t go in. It’ll hit the floor of the House soon and then the Senate. If you don’t vote for it, you shut the government down and you’re a bad guy. And that’s the way it’s been year after year after year.
No wonder the American people are not happy. It’s not going to do anything to even control in any way the power of the president to bring in unlimited numbers of refugees and in effect require the taxpayers of America to pay for it. It’s going to be a huge cost over time. This ought to be, as you suggest, transparent. It ought to be voted on with experts on both sides discussing the pros and cons and then we vote. I don’t like this—it’s not the way this country ought to be operated.
Technically speaking, the government runs out of funding on December 11—Friday night at midnight—but Congress is expected to pass a stopgap short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government for a few days until the omnibus is completed. The text of the omnibus has not yet been made public, but the expectation is that a stopgap spending measure will go for a few days into early next week and then the full omnibus will be considered and approved by then.
Sessions has been sounding the alarm about Ryan’s and McConnell’s plans to enable Obama’s efforts to bring Syrian refugees to America and resettle them in cities and towns nationwide. On Sean Hannity’s radio program on Monday, Sessions warned that unless Congress does something—Ryan’s and McConnell’s planned surrender aside—Obama could run roughshod over Americans with this program putting them in even more danger than they’re currently in.
“The president on the refugee policy has unlimited powers,” Sessions told Hannity.
All he has to do is tell Congress what he intends to do. So he’s now talking about not… 10,000 next year but 30,000—he could go to 50 or 100,000 if he chose—and Congress has put itself in a position to fund whatever level he decides. So I think it’s important, as Congressman [Brian] Babin has talked about, to take a stand on this and control this. We don’t have to yield that power completely to the President.
Hannity also followed up by asking Sessions about how the GOP seems ready to fold, and surrender the power of the purse yet again. In response, Sessions implored his GOP colleagues to stand for their constituents rather than fold before Obama.
“We do have the power of the purse,” Sessions said.
We don’t have to fund an unlimited number of refugees to come to America because the president said that’s what he wants to do. For Heaven’s sake, Congress is elected by the American people. We have a duty to put money on projects that we think are good for America and not spend money that we think are bad for America. And I think it’s time to say no to the president.
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