Pelosi: Court gives GOP chance to save face

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is urging Republicans to take advantage of a federal court ruling against President Obama’s immigration actions by passing a clean bill to fund the Homeland Security Department.

“The court has given them something to save their face,” Pelosi said Tuesday during a press briefing in the Capitol. “I don’t agree with the court, but it has given them a path.

{mosads}“They should take the path.”

The comments come as conservatives on and off Capitol Hill are insisting that any bill funding the Homeland Security agency must also undo several administration programs shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Amid that debate, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, ruled last week against Obama’s programs, arguing that the administration failed to take required procedural steps in adopting them. The decision came as part of a lawsuit against Obama’s actions filed by Texas and 25 other states, which contend the initiatives will hit their budgets with unaffordable new costs. 

Republicans, though united in hailing the decision, are divided about how it should affect the DHS funding debate. 

The conservative wing says the ruling is more proof that Obama’s programs are an abuse of executive authority – and more reason for Congress to fight to gut them as part of the Homeland Security bill. 

“We cannot and must not establish the precedent that we will fund illegal actions on the hope that another branch of government will intervene and strike down that illegal action at some later point,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said following the ruling.

But centrists are arguing that the decision is indication that the courts will take on Obama’s executive actions, freeing Congress to pass a DHS bill without the immigration riders.

“I’ve always thought the judicial system was an alternative way to deal with the president’s overreach last November, and now that one court has ruled to put a stay on his executive order, perhaps that frees us to go forward and get the department fully funded,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Monday.

The Justice Department on Monday filed a request for an emergency court order overturning Hanen’s ruling. If granted, that emergency stay would allow Obama’s deportation-relief programs to launch while the courts examine the deeper questions of their legality. Meanwhile, the administration has suspended those initiatives indefinitely.

Taking matters in their own hands, House Republicans last month passed a $40 billion DHS funding bill that dismantles Obama’s 2014 and 2012 executive actions on immigration. The bill has been blocked in the Senate, however, where Democrats are unified in their opposition to the immigration riders. 

After staging four unsuccessful votes on the package this month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday announced a new plan designed to break through the gridlock by splitting the package into two separate votes: One on legislation undoing Obama’s 2014 executive actions on immigration, and another on a clean DHS funding bill.

McConnell said that strategy, if backed by Senate Democrats and House Republicans, could prevent a shutdown of the agency before Saturday’s deadline.

It remains to be seen how House leaders approach that plan in the face of conservatives who are already lining up against it. Bolstering those conservatives, Heritage Action for America on Tuesday announced it will key vote any DHS bill that doesn’t dismantle Obama’s executive actions, which the group deems “amnesty” for those in the country illegally.

“As the Majority Leader said last year, the power of the purse is the ‘only tool’ Congress has to rein in executive overreach,” Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham said in a statement.

Pelosi, for her part, said Tuesday that the GOP’s focus on the immigration programs amounts to “silliness” that puts the country at great risk of attack.

“It’s really sad to see the gamesmanship – I don’t even know what to call it – the silliness that the Republicans in the Congress are engaged in on our Homeland Security,” she said. “We take an oath to protect and that is completely undermined by the actions [Republicans have] taken.”