According to reports from several outlets, legislation aimed at blocking the president’s executive orders will also roll back his deferred action program.
The GOP-led House Appropriations Committee unveiled the base spending bill for DHS on Friday afternoon. Members plan to consider the measure on the floor Tuesday or Wednesday, along with three amendments.
One of those amendments, from Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), would defund Obama’s executive orders on immigration. […]
Language nullifying the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals Program (DACA), introduced by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) last summer, will be offered as a separate amendment on the floor.
This is the metaphorical junk-shot of anti-immigrant legislation.
The White House has clearly indicated that the president will veto any measure aimed at blocking his executive orders, but Republicans are going a step further than that.
Congressional Republicans are no stranger to passing legislation that has no chance of becoming law, but the stakes are higher now. Not only do they now control both chambers of Congress; the shit they throw at a wall today will stay there through the next presidential election.
In addition to being terrible policy, this is also terrible politics.
Democrats and the president are discussing free community college while Republicans are moving to deport millions of children and students. And this is all conditional toward funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Under the previous administration, threatening the Department of Homeland Security would have been an unrivaled heresy, but today Republicans are doing exactly that while tying the department’s fate to immigration policy.
It’s even difficult to rationalize or explain the latter because defunding the department would necessarily mean that enforcement would cease. Why would they want that?
The simplest explanation is that congressional Republicans just aren’t that bright.