Senate

GOP pushes Obama to halt Syria refugee plan

by Jordain Carney - 11/16/15 4:54 PM ET

The Obama administration is under growing pressure from Republicans in the wake of the Paris attacks to scrap its plan to increase the number of refugees accepted into the United States every year.

Congressional Republicans are pointing to Friday’s attacks, which appear to have been carried out by at least one individual who came to France while posing as a refugee, to bolster long-standing national security concerns about the resettlement.

{mosads}”The Syrian refugee program should be suspended until the American people are satisfied that they know exactly who the President is admitting into the country via this program,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who chairs the Intelligence Committee and is up for reelection next year, said Monday, adding that there is “too much at stake.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who faces a tough reelection battle next year, said the administration should stop resettling Syrian refugees in the United States “until there has been a thorough review of DHS and State Department vetting procedures to endure that no terrorists or individuals with links to Islamist extremist groups make it into the United States.”

Republican Sens. Mark Kirk (Ill.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Dan Coats (Ind.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Shelly Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) also sent a letter to Obama saying that “our first and most important priority” should be making sure that refugees aren’t a threat to the United States.

Kirk and Ayotte, like Portman, represent states that will be hotly contested in next year’s elections.

Arkansas Republican Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton are pushing for a temporary moratorium on resetting Syrian refugees into the United States until the president certifies “the integrity of the security vetting process.”

Across the Capitol, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has asked for the administration to provide lawmakers with a classified briefing on the attacks, which the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is claiming responsibility for.

The terrorist group has also threatened to attack Washington, with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), pointing to the video as a reason why the Obama administration shouldn’t “increase, much less expedite, refugees being brought to our soil.”

Separately, House Republicans, including Rep. Frank Guinta (N.H.) and Michael McCaul (Texas), are also asking that the president suspend moving Syrian refugees into the United States.

The administration, however, has shown no sign in the wake of Friday’s attacks that it is rethinking its plan to accept additional Syrian refugees or to accept 100,000 refugees—not all from Syria—into the country per year by 2017.

President Obama earlier Monday said that “we have to each of us do our part, and the United States has to step up and do its part,” adding that calls to only accept Christian refugees are “shameful.”

Republicans, however, are suggesting that the fight over Syrian refugees could be linked to funding the government ahead of a mid-December deadline to avoid a shutdown. Obama supporters in Congress have repeatedly said that the State Department would need extra money to vet and resettle the additional refugees under the administration’s plan.

But Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is asking members of the Appropriations Committee to require that Congress separately approve a plan from the Obama administration before it would get any funding. Any plan, however, could face an uphill battle with Republicans already voicing concerns over national security before Friday’s attacks.

The administration also appears to have, at least temporarily, lost an ally in Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said on Monday that the United States needs a “timeout” on accepting additional refugees.

Graham previously backed the United States accepting its “fair share” of refugees and introduced legislation that would give the administration $1 billion in emergency funding to combat Syrian refugee crisis.

He added on Monday that “the one thing I’ve learned from Paris is that we need to have a timeout on bringing refugees into this country until we have a system that we think will work.”