Will Congress use executive order on immigration as excuse for more gridlock?

Regardless of that set of facts, and the additional fact that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took sweeping executive actions on deferring deportations without a peep from Congress, it is the case that the president’s move will change the dynamics of policy-making and politics during the weeks ahead, and beyond. There are two areas, in particular, I am watching right now. The first is to follow the money.

Before the election, anticipating a Republican Senate, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made clear that he wanted the new, all-Republican Congress to start out on a strong and positive footing by clearing the decks in the lame-duck session of troublesome and divisive matters, starting with spending bills—doing a clean continuing resolution through the current fiscal year that would move the budget and appropriations showdowns to later next year. As numerous news stories have pointed out, there is now a lot of pushback to that approach, a scramble to come up with a strategy to use the spending leverage to blow up the president’s executive order. That strategy starts with a set of short-term CRs that expire in January. Most programs would be extended through the year, but there would be a narrow, targeted bill cutting off funding to implement the EO.

Making that work is a very tricky and explosive business. First, if there is only a short-term extension, it might be blocked in the Senate, leading to a possible shutdown in December. Second, it will be difficult to construct a bill that would cut off funding for the executive order without cutting funding for immigration activities overall, including the Border Patrol. And in any case, the president could veto other spending bills and take the case to the country. Whether there is any circumstance in which a shutdown would not be blamed on Congress is an interesting thing to test. But if we segue right from an election that gave Republicans control, after which incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flatly pledged no shutdown, to a shutdown right before the holidays, that would not bode well for the public image of the new Congress. Will McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and McCarthy try to push the controversy to next year’s appropriations and budget? Will they argue that the best way to push back on immigration is to block the president’s nominee for attorney general? That would leave Eric Holder in place, while blocking a highly qualified and widely praised African-American woman. A big set of questions.