Obama: No Reason for Government Shutdown on Immigration
President Barack Obama said he doesnt expect Republicans to attempt to use a year-end spending bill to counter his executive actions on immigration, a move that would threaten to shut the government.
Theres no reason for it to shut down. We traveled down that path before, Obama said a press conference in Brisbane, Australia, where he was attending the Group of 20 summit. It was bad for the country, it was bad for every elected official in Washington and at the end of the day was resolved in the same way it wouldve been resolved if we hadnt shut the government down.
Obama is in the final stages of crafting a plan that would provide relief from deportation to many undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens and possibly also parents of legal residents and immigrants brought to the country as minors, according to people familiar with administration planning.
Obama may use his executive authority to expand an order he issued in 2012 that staved off deportation for qualified undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Doing so would be a direct challenge to House Republicans, whove refused to act on immigration legislation already passed by the Senate. Republican congressional leaders, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, warned Obama at a White House meeting last week that acting unilaterally would poison relations. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters Nov. 13 in Washington that the party will fight the president tooth and nail on this.
McConnell previously said there would be no government shut down, and Obama said today he took McConnell at his word.
To avoid a politically risky showdown, Republicans in the House are considering pushing the immigration fight with Obama into early next year by attaching language to a stop-gap funding bill that would keep the government open past Dec. 11.
Under the option, Congress could block funding for agencies involved in immigration, such as the Department of Homeland Security, so that a presidential veto would lead to a shutdown of only the agencies covered in the bill. The tactic means the final decision about immigration spending in the current fiscal year would fall to the next Congress, with Republicans in control of both chambers.
Obama said he is primarily concerned with calibrating the executive order in the proper way, not how Republicans will react. The executive action will require adjustments to how the Homeland Security Department operates and where it deploys resources, Obama said.
I want to make sure weve crossed all our Ts and dotted all of our Is, Obama said. He said the Justice Department has ruled that his action would be on firm legal footing.
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Obama: No Reason for Government Shutdown on Immigration