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11/26/14, "Exclusive -- Congressional Research Service: Congress Has Power to Block Funding for Obama's Executive Amnesty," Matthew Boyle, Breitbart
"The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has concluded that House
Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) is wrong, and
that Congress can in fact block funding for President Barack Obama’s
executive amnesty order.
“In light of Congress’s constitutional power over the purse, the
Supreme Court has recognized that ‘Congress may always circumscribe
agency discretion to allocate resources by putting restrictions in the
operative statutes,’” the CRS, a legislative authority on Capitol Hill,
wrote in a report sent to incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen.
Jeff Sessions (R-AL). “Where Congress has done so, ‘an agency is not
free simply to disregard statutory responsibilities.’ Therefore, if a
statute were enacted which prohibited appropriated funds from being used
for some specified purposes, then the relevant funds would be
unavailable to be obligated or expended for those purposes.”
Sessions’ team provided the CRS report—which is not made public
unless members of Congress who request such reports decide to make them
so—exclusively to Breitbart News.
Rogers, last week, argued that
Congress could not block funding for Obama’s executive amnesty because
the agency that will be printing the work authorization and other
documents for illegal aliens—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS)—operates primarily on fees it collects rather than from tax
revenue collected by the federal government.
The House Appropriations Committee, which Rogers chairs, said in a statement last week:
"The primary agency for implementing the President's new
immigration executive order is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS). This agency is entirely self-funded through the fees
it collects on various immigration applications. Congress does not
appropriate funds for any of its operations, including the issuance of
immigration status or work permits, with the exception of the 'E-Verify'
program. Therefore, the Appropriations process cannot be used to
'de-fund' the agency. The agency has the ability to continue to collect
and use fees to continue current operations, and to expand operations as
under a new Executive Order, without needing legislative approval by
the Appropriations Committee or the Congress, even under a continuing
resolution or a government shutdown."
But the CRS report that Sessions requested shows that is untrue. Even
if an agency like USCIS operates on fees rather than tax revenues
appropriated by Congress, the Congress can still block funding for the
implementation of such matters as Obama’s executive amnesty. CRS wrote:
"A fee-funded agency or activity typically refers to one in
which the amounts appropriated by Congress for that agency or activity
are derived from fees collected from some external source. Importantly,
amounts received as fees by federal agencies must still be appropriated
by Congress to that agency in order to be available for obligation or
expenditure by the agency. In some cases, this appropriation is provided
through the annual appropriations process. In other instances, it is an
appropriation that has been enacted independently of the annual
appropriations process (such as a permanent appropriation in an
authorizing act). In either case, the funds available to the agency
through fee collections would be subject to the same potential
restrictions imposed by Congress on the use of its appropriations as any
other type of appropriated funds."
Cutting the legalese language here, basically this means that, no
matter how USCIS gets it money—even if it’s from a prior authorization
appropriation that is permanent and based on fee collection—Congress can
still restrict the use of that money for some purposes.
On the night Obama announced the amnesty—last Thursday—Sessions said
that the House of Representatives must lead by passing a government
funding bill that blocks any money being spent on Obama’s amnesty.
“The House should send the Senate a government funding bill which
ensures no funds can be spent for this unlawful purpose,” Sessions
said. “If [Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid’s Senate
Democrats vote to surrender their own institution to an imperial dictate
and block the measure, then the House should send a short-term funding
measure so the new GOP majority can be sworn in and pass a funding bill
with the needed language.”
The Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz laid out
on Tuesday how one of the things “lost amidst the hullabaloo of mob
rule in Ferguson” is that the GOP is planning to “capitulate” to Obama’s
amnesty. Part of that caving by Speaker John Boehner to Obama on
executive amnesty, Horowitz notes, is that Republicans will promise to
fight later—but won’t block the funding of it now.
“This strategy allows GOP leaders to promise a fight three months
from now, after Obama’s executive action becomes more entrenched,
without having to fight on defund immediately,” Horowitz wrote. “It will
also buy them time to work on the second step: negotiating with Obama
to pass amnesty legislatively.”
If Rogers—or other top allies of Speaker Boehner like 2012 GOP vice
presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)—don’t block the funding of
Obama’s executive amnesty, they could face dire consequences.
“Some Kentucky Tea Party activists are already talking about a
primary challenge to Representative Harold Rogers, chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, who has been in office since 1981,” the New York Times’ Jeremy Peters wrote on Tuesday.
“Breitbart News, a conservative website, reported on the possible
primary challenger this week. Mr. Rogers’ office has said Congress could
not simply defund the president’s directive, because the agency that
carries it out, Citizenship and Immigration Services, is not financed by
appropriations but by the fees it generates.”
Later in the story, Peters noted that Ryan and even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) could face primary challenges in 2016.
“Other potential primary targets, Tea Party groups say, are
Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2012 Republican
vice-presidential nominee, and even Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of
Florida, who was elected initially with the help of Tea Party energy,”
Peters wrote." via Levin twitter
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