GOP's Hal Rogers Floats Plan to Defund Immigration Order but Avoid Shutdown

A senior U.S. House Republican on Tuesday floated a plan to avoid a December government shutdown fight while also setting a path for undoing sweeping immigration changes President Barack Obama is expected to execute.

Under a strategy suggested by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, Congress next month would pass a bill funding the U.S. government through September, the end of the current fiscal year. That would avoid closure of the government in an ongoing battle with President Barack Obama over immigration policy.

But once Obama issues his expected order on immigration policy, Congress could pass a separate bill known as a "recisions" bill cutting funding for those actions.

Obama is expected to announce steps by year's end to allow possibly as many as five million undocumented residents remain in the United States without fear of deportation. The move likely would allow them to work legally, at least temporarily.

Republicans, who will control the Senate as well as the House of Representatives in the new Congress that begins in January, are weighing how to respond. Many oppose what they say would amount to an "amnesty" by the president for people in the United States illegally.

Advocates of Rogers' approach said it would be better than some other options under consideration, such as funding the government for only a short time, or passing legislation to ban Obama's move before he has made it.

Congress needs to act to fund the government by Dec. 11, when existing money runs out.

"Nothing's been decided; all options are still open to us, including the possibility of recision of funding after the fact," Rogers told reporters after a closed-door Republican meeting where he made his suggestion.

House Speaker John Boehner, asked by reporters if the recisions approach had merit, said "maybe."

One challenge of a recision bill would be getting the president to sign it into law. Republican aides said former President Clinton signed a recisions bill in the mid-1990s that was attached to another priority he wanted passed.