Rep. Hal Rogers Calls for ‘Rescission’ Plan to Fight Executive Amnesty

On Tuesday, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) tried to convince Republicans that they could rescind a long-term spending bill if Pres. Obama moved forward with an executive amnesty, but it was poorly received according to several Members who attended the meeting. Rep. Rogers has been reluctant to embrace a plan to pass short-term spending bills, allowing the next Congress to defund the President’s action.

Rep. Rogers has been pushing to fully fund the government through September, 2015 with no provisions to block funds for President Obama’s executive amnesty. The long-term omnibus spending bill would prevent Congress from using its power of the purse to defund executive amnesty. He says Congress can use a rescission bill to defund Pres. Obama’s amnesty, but the bill would need to overcome a Senate filibuster and a likely presidential veto to work.

House Republicans are skeptical of the plan. According to Representative Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), many House members hadn’t contemplated the strategy until Rep. Rogers mentioned it.

“Chairman Rogers just got up and said if we pass an omnibus and then the president does this executive amnesty, he said we can rescind it, and we can rescind it with 218 and 51 and we don’t need the president,” said Representative Salmon. “That’s what he just told me. I’ve never heard that before.”

According to a 2014 Congressional Research Service Report, “As budget authority providing the funding must be enacted into law, so too a rescission canceling the budget authority must be enacted into law.”

Rep. Rogers reportedly had a hard time explaining the idea to a scrum of reporters given that the last time it was used was the 1990’s.

“There’s any number of possibilities including rescission of spending after the fact,” Rep. Rogers said. “One of the difficulties we’re having is we really don’t know what actions he plans to actually take. When Livingston took over as chairman, he proposed and passed rescissions of spending bills that after fact took away money that had been appropriated for an agency.”

Many Republican Members are pushing to hold off on major legislation, including an omnibus spending bill, until the next Congress, with Republican majorities in both chambers, is sworn in.

“I’m open minded,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.). “But I’m more inclined towards doing as little as we can at a time when we’re weak and wait to do as much as we can when we have the Senate.”

For more on this story, visit Breitbart News