Battle over immigration poses risks for Obama

New York Times, Washington :
President Obama’s looming action on immigration is the first real opportunity for the new Republican leadership in Congress to demonstrate they can avoid the pitfalls of opposing the president’s policies at all costs and instead unite around a governing agenda of their own.
But Obama, in insisting that he will take unilateral action to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, has delivered to his adversaries a compelling political target they may not be able to resist. On a trip to Asia this week, Obama effectively said “I told you so” to Republicans, saying he gave them every opportunity to avoid the action he is preparing to take.
The taunt by Obama seems to have worked. A day after routing Democrats in the midterm elections this month, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will become majority leader in January, tried to immediately pre-empt any talk of a government shutdown. Now, a week later, some members of McConnell’s party are already talking about doing just that.
A rerun of the 2013 shutdown battles over the Affordable Care Act has the potential to drown out the new Republican message before the party even takes control of Congress. Although House Republicans on Friday did conduct some business – they approved a bill authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry petroleum from Canadian oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast – the continuing talk of impeachment and shutdown threatened to overshadow the vote.
“I think we need to go all the way,” said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho, referring to what steps
Republicans should be prepared to take to prevent the president from acting unilaterally on immigration. “What I think is a mistake is for any Republican to take any option off the table.”
Administration officials said the president will shield from deportation up to five million people living illegally in the United States and provide many of them with work permits. The president also plans to refocus the activities of the nation’s 12,000 immigration agents on deportations for convicted criminals and people who have recently slipped across the border.
The president’s decision has broad support among members of his own party on Capitol Hill. While they have quibbled about the best moment for Obama to announce the plan – some are pushing him to delay until at least mid-December, in order to give the must-pass spending bill a better chance of success – Democrats appear eager for him to do it.
Democrats are already exploiting the divisions among Republicans by painting them as the leaders of government obstruction and gridlock.
“Just over one week after elections, Republicans are back to true form by talking about shutting down the government over an issue the vast majority of Americans support and 68 senators already passed – a comprehensive compromise on immigration,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
At the same time, Republicans have seized on what they call Obama’s “executive amnesty.” They are warning the president and his Democratic allies that such action could trigger lawsuits and the threat of another budget stalemate as well as a government shutdown. Speaker John A. Boehner left open the possibility this week of another shutdown, even as McConnell ruled it out.
So far Republicans believe their best path to blocking the president’s immigration actions is a spending bill that must pass by Dec. 11 in order to fund the government through the next year. In the Senate, three Republicans – Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama – have taken the lead in urging their colleagues to oppose any spending bill unless it includes provisions to stop the president from acting on immigration.
If the spending bill does not contain their desired language, Republicans say another option would be to pass a short-term spending measure to fund the government into early next year, when Republicans will control both chambers and believe they will have more leverage.
“It’s very short term, so that if the president does go through, then the next time we take up funding, he doesn’t get it, and we have a majority,” said Representative Matt Salmon, Republican of Arizona.
Such a move, however, could simply delay a showdown with the White House, at which point Republicans would control the Congress, but would also risk shouldering more of the blame.
For now, many Republican strategists worry about political damage if the party’s first action on Capitol Hill is a protracted budget battle that leads to a shutdown – much as occurred after the shutdown over Obama’s health care law in 2013. Even many Republicans who have been vocal opponents of the president over immigration say that such an outcome is not their goal.
“Nobody wants a shutdown – nobody,” Salmon said. “Put the kiss of death on that right now.”
Nonetheless, Salmon sent a letter with 63 signatures Thursday to the chairman and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, urging them not to send any spending bill to the Senate that does not include “language that would prohibit funding for the president’s reported intentions to create work permits and green cards for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.”
Meanwhile, Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is an outspoken opponent of any immigration overhaul, said he was huddling with his conservative allies in “back-of-the-room, outside-the-room” conversations. He is also readying legislation that would be triggered by Obama’s unilateral immigration action, defunding that executive action, as well as the protected status Obama has already provided for undocumented immigrants who arrived here as children. “You should uphold the Constitution, come what may,” King said.