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 Tea Party lawmakers stood firm against House of Representatives
Speaker John Boehner's plan to pass a spending bill keeping most of
the government running through September 2015 and postponing the
battle over immigration until early next year, when Republicans take
control of the Senate and expand their House majority.
That opposition could force Boehner once again to seek Democratic
support to pass his spending proposal and avert a shutdown after the
government's spending authority expires. Republican leaders are
desperate to avoid that after a 16-day shutdown a year ago inflicted
heavy political damage on the party.
The small but unruly band of conservatives, who have been a
persistent headache for Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell, said there was no reason to wait until next year to try
to deny funding for Obama's order.
"Congress should stand up and use the power of the purse," said
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. He and others argue that
Obama's announcement last month that he was using executive powers
to ease the threat of deportation for up to 4.7 million undocumented
immigrants amounts to an illegal amnesty.
 "We will not allocate taxpayers money to lawless and illegal
amnesties," he said outside the Capitol, where a small crowd of Tea
Party backers waving U.S. and Revolutionary War-era "Don't Tread on
Me" flags offered support.
A ringleader of the House resistance, Representative Steve King of
Iowa, estimated a core group of 20 to 50 Republican House members
supported the effort to use the must-pass government spending bill
as leverage in the immigration fight.
But Boehner has used Democrats to pass spending bills during
previous showdowns, including the shutdown last year, and many
conservatives acknowledged they were fighting an uphill battle.
"There’s likely to be Democratic support for it, which means they
could pass it without us," said conservative Representative John
Fleming, a Louisiana Republican.
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A bill to keep the government operating beyond Dec. 11 likely will
not emerge in the House until Monday at the earliest, a senior House
Republican aide said, meaning floor debate and a vote on passage
would not come until Wednesday or Thursday, the deadline day.
McConnell endorsed Boehner's proposal to pass a full year of funding
for most government agencies but give only a short-term extension to
the Department of Homeland Security, which will implement the
immigration order.
That would give Republicans a chance to revisit funding for the plan
next year when they will take control of both chambers of Congress
after November's midterm elections.
"I think that's a pretty responsible way to go forward. It doesn't
shut anything down but also doesn't give the Department of Homeland
Security a full year's funding and guarantees a kind of ongoing
discussion about this whole issue," McConnell said on the Sirius
radio program "Yahoo News on POTUS."
McConnell repeated his vow to avoid a shutdown, which he warned
would rattle economic markets. The Dow and S&P 500 stock indexes
dipped around 5 percent during last year's shutdown, which was
accompanied by a dispute over the country's debt ceiling, but
rebounded afterward. U.S. economic growth slowed slightly because of
spending cuts.
(Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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