Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Emphasis on the Jefferson.
Likely incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may be talking nice and promising comity and common sense in its dealings with the Obama administration. But the tea party wing of the Senate? They're having none of it and making noise about a shutdown over the president's intention to use executive power on immigration. Case in point? Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), in an
op-ed for
Politico:
And it cannot be implemented if Congress simply includes routine language on any government funding bill prohibiting the expenditure of funds for this unlawful purpose. This is the same way we prevented the President from closing Guantanamo Bay. Such application of congressional power is ordinary, unexceptional, and used thousands of times.
Congress has the power of the purse. The President cannot spend a dime unless Congress appropriates it.
Karl Rove, who himself has advocated for amnesty, urged Congress to use its spending power to block the President’s fiat. He said Republicans should “use every tool available,” and put “riders on appropriations bills that say no money shall be spent to execute this policy.”
Yet reports have surfaced of plans to pass a long-term lame-duck spending bill through Harry Reid’s Senate that contains no such prohibition. This would be unthinkable.
Now, Sessions and his fellow ideologues like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) are being very careful about not using the word "shutdown" and are in fact
claiming that using appropriations bills to shape policy is standard procedure. Yes, except for one key aspect: trying to use appropriations bills to defund one of the president's key policy priorities will likely lead to a shutdown because, well, the president is not likely to sign a bill that undoes a signature achievement (think back to Sen. Ted Cruz and his unsuccessful shutdown over the Affordable Care Act).
It only took about a week, and there's already a civil war brewing within Republican Senate ranks over the mere idea of an executive action on immigration. If only it had happened before the election.