Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.(Photo: Win McNamee, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders are trying to move forward with a sweeping funding bill despite calls from some conservatives to use it as a vehicle to try to thwart President Obama's executive order on immigration.
"We're moving forward on a good program to get an omnibus done," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in reference to the more than $1 trillion package that includes all twelve of the annual spending bills. The funding bills manage nearly all of federal spending outside mandatory spending on programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
"I personally, being an appropriator, think we ought to go with the omnibus as much as we can, but that dynamic could be changed by the White House," said Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which handles these bills.
Congress was set to adjourn Thursday for the Thanksgiving break, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is set to meet Dec. 1 to attempt to hash out remaining issues in the spending package and have it ready for a vote before government funding runs out Dec. 11.
Without another spending bill in place, the government would shut down. Incoming Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said repeatedly that will not happen again.
Congressional leaders and members of the Appropriations Committee want to complete the spending bills for fiscal year 2015 — through September — to start the new, GOP-controlled Congress in January with a clean slate on budget matters.
The immigration issue has roiled that plan as some lawmakers see the funding package as the best way to prevent Obama from implementing his executive order, which would affect the status of millions of undocumented immigrants.
"He's killed the omnibus, the president has. That's a done deal," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, an immigration opponent who said Congress should work to "cut off all funding to implement or enforce any unconstitutional executive orders."
The problem for King and like-minded conservatives is that the primary organization tasked with implementing the president's order is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security entirely self-funded by applications fees. In other words, Congress does not provide it any funding, so Congress can't cut off its funding in the spending bills.
It would take a separate act of Congress to affect CIS, and any such action to rein in the White House executive order would probably be vetoed by the president.
Still, Republicans are looking for ways to push back on Obama's executive action. "If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act," McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. "We're considering a variety of options, but make no mistake: When the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act."
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Congress should pass the omnibus, and a GOP-controlled Congress should move forward next year with bills to secure the border and overhaul the temporary work visa program. "We should start picking the things we think are important and see if he wants to veto those things," Cole said.
Republicans have learned that stopgap funding bills and shutdowns are ineffective, Cole said. "Is this the ideal time to fight, when the other side controls the Senate?" he said. "That doesn't mean we're going to let this go unnoticed."
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