Congressman Steve King.
Republican Congressman Steve King tried, but failed to get House approval of his attempt to “cut off funding now” so President Obama’s executive order on immigration cannot be implemented. King asked the Republican-led House Rules Committee for permission to put his plan forward for a House vote, but he was rebuffed.
“It’s time that we stood up and fight now rather than fund now and fight later,” King said in a video statement posted on YouTube.
Sometime today a House vote is expected on a massive spending plan that will keep most of the government running through next September. A vote to prevent Obama’s action on immigration will come in January, GOP leaders say, after the new congress is sworn in and Republicans have control of both the House and the Senate.
“We’re sitting here with a majority in the House and soon a majority in the Senate, but waiting for the Senate is waiting too long because if we wait, we are then compelled to fund now and fight later, if we fight at all,” King said. “I say, instead, cut the funding now. Start the fight now.”
King’s alternative plan would have funded federal government operations through January 31st.
“That seats the new Republican majority in the Senate, it seats the expanded (Republican) majority in the House and it makes us stronger in fighting this president,” King said. “We will have to put him in a political straightjacket or there won’t be anything left of the Constitution by the time we elect another president.”
The spending plan congress is expected to pass only funds the Department of Homeland Security through February. That’s the agency which oversees most immigration policy.