McConnell: We're Not Going to Block Obama's Amnesty by Budgetary Means

Mark Krikorian says a vote for a long-term budget is, effectively, a vote for amnesty, as a long-term deal takes all leverage from our hands and delivers it all to Obama.

Fox News reported last night possible details of the president’s lawless immigration plans. The ten-point plan, which could be announced as early as next Friday, includes work permits for up to 4.5 million illegal aliens, an expansion of the earlier lawless DACA amnesty (covering perhaps another 300,000 illegals), and pulling the plug on the Secure Communities program (which runs the fingerprints of arrested suspects through DHS databases at the same time they’re checked by the FBI). These are all demands of Obama’s leftist and ethnic-chauvinist constituencies; what the corporate interests get is a unilateral increase in job-related green cards, by illegally exempting dependents from the numerical caps. The plan would also give a raise to ICE officers to "increase morale," as though that’s the reason for the despair among law-enforcement officers prohibited by their political superiors from enforcing the law.

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[] Congress still has the power of the purse. While it cannot stop Obama's passive abuse of discretion (his exempting the vast majority of illegal aliens from immigration enforcement, for instance), it can use that power to prevent active abuses, like the provision of work permits, Social Security cards, and driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, which would be politically irreversible.

This is why the message of today’s editorial rejecting a long-term budget deal made in the lame duck is so important. Harry Reid will obviously not agree to any funding riders prohibiting Obama from issuing work permits to illegal aliens. Also, the Republican leadership has already said it’s not going to engineer another government shutdown. But in the next Congress, the House could pull out the Homeland Security budget (rather than fold it into an omnibus funding bill for the whole government) and attach the rider just to that, so when Obama vetoes it, only DHS will be subject to a "shutdown." The reason for the quotation marks is that it won’t be much of a shutdown since law-enforcement components continue to function as "essential personnel," including the Border Patrol, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, ICE, and the TSA. In fact, the chief component of DHS that actually would be idled by a budget battle would be US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the very bureau that would have to implement Obama’s lawless amnesty.

This creates a Catch 22 for Obama, if only the GOP has the wit to exploit it -- if he signs a DHS budget with the rider prohibiting his amnesty, then it doesn’t happen (though he would still be able to implement certain other parts of his lawless plan). But if he vetoes it, the agency that he needs to process the amnesty is furloughed, so the amnesty still doesn’t happen.

That's pretty brilliant, really.

posted by Ace at 03:40 PM

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