Lee: US ‘not heading into a government shutdown’

A leading conservative senator said on Sunday that Congress is “not heading into a government shutdown” despite President Obama’s anticipated unilateral action on immigration reform.

“I think we’re not heading into a government shutdown. There are a lot of reasons for that,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) – a Tea Party favorite – told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation.” “One of them has to do with the fact that this president has a few options in front of him.”

{mosads}Lee warned, however, that his party could not react to potential executive orders related to immigration reform until Obama acts.

“Exactly what we do may depend on what he does and when he does it, how he goes about it and what his proposed basis for doing that is. It’s difficult for us to know how best we should respond when we don’t know what he’s going to do yet. But we’re standing ready … it’s important for us to defend the rule of law and to make sure that the institutional prerogative of Congress… is respected,” Lee said Sunday morning.

Beyond the immediate immigration reform stand-off, Lee predicted that the Senate would vote on repealing the president’s healthcare law – possibly using a tactic that would require a simple majority of the upper chamber.

He conceded that it would be difficult to override a presidential veto, however, and kept open the possibility of working to make changes to ObamaCare that would garner bipartisan approval.

“I think very soon we will see a vote to repeal the medical device tax in ObamaCare. And I think we may see a number of other votes on other provisions as well, such as whittling the work week down to 30 hours, which is hurting poor and middle-class Americans disproportionately, possibly a vote on repealing the individual mandate and some other provisions,” Lee said.