GOP seeks year-end plan on funding, immigration

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Year-end holidays beckoning, House Republicans struggled Tuesday to coalesce behind a plan that avoids a government shutdown next week and simultaneously challenges President Barack Obama’s decision to spare millions of immigrants from deportation.

A separate bipartisan bill to extend dozens of expiring tax breaks was on a more-certain track for approval, even though it would increase federal red ink by an estimated $44 billion over a decade. Republicans supported it, although they intend to mount a strong anti-deficit campaign next year, and the White House signaled that Obama would sign the one-year measure after threatening to veto a longer-term version.

Taxes, spending and immigration are the dominant issues in the final few weeks of a two-year Congress that has been a hothouse for partisan gridlock — and that seemed on track for one final showdown if not more.

After meeting privately with the House GOP rank and file, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said Obama’s actions on immigration were a “serious breach of our Constitution.”

The administration countered. “The reality is that, for decades, presidents have used executive authority to enhance immigration policy,” Secretary Jeh C. Johnson of the Department of Homeland Security told a skeptical House committee. He said he was “fully comfortable” that the president had acted within his authority in directing federal agencies not to make a priority of deporting immigrants in the country illegally, as long as they were otherwise law-abiding.

Republicans were unsparing in their denunciations of the president’s actions, although some also said their chances of staying Obama’s hand would be stronger after the party takes control of the Senate in January.

There were other priorities as one Congress neared an end and another waited in the wings.

House and Senate negotiators reported agreement on a sweeping defense bill. It ratifies Obama’s expansion of the U.S. military mission in Iraq and allows the Pentagon to train moderate Syrian forces, steps designed to counter Islamic State militants.