Congressional Analysis: Congress Can De-fund Obama’s Executive Amnesty

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) determined that Congress can block funding for the president’s plan to hand out work permits for illegal aliens, Breitbart reports. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., had claimed that Congress did not have to power to remove funding because the agency under which work permits and other documents are distributed is funded by applicant fees.

The CRS analysis, which Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., requested and provided to Breitbart, said:

“In light of Congress’s constitutional power over the purse, the Supreme Court has recognized that ‘Congress may always circumscribe agency discretion to allocate resources by putting restrictions in the operative statutes. Where Congress has done so, ‘an agency is not free simply to disregard statutory responsibilities.’ Therefore, if a statute were enacted which prohibited appropriated funds from being used for some specified purposes, then the relevant funds would be unavailable to be obligated or expended for those purposes…(A)mounts received as fees by federal agencies must still be appropriated by Congress to that agency in order to be available for obligation or expenditure by the agency…(T)he funds available to the agency through fee collections would be subject to the same potential restrictions imposed by Congress on the use of its appropriations as any other type of appropriated funds.”

Rogers recently argued that since U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is largely funded by the fees paid by immigration-benefit applicants rather than federal tax revenues, Congress cannot constrain its spending. “Congress does not appropriate funds for any of its operations, including the issuance of immigration status or work permits, with the exception of the ‘E-Verify’ program. Therefore, the Appropriations process cannot be used to ‘de-fund’ the agency,” Rogers said. The CRS analysis shows that Rogers’ argument is incorrect.

Read more in Breitbart News.