Roby: CRomnibus ‘does not fund amnesty, as some have claimed’

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL2) on Monday said that the so-called “CRomnibus,” the $1.1 trillion government funding bill passed by the House and Senate last week, does not fund the President’s executive actions on immigration, in spite of what others have said.

The bill funds the government through next September, but only funds the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 27.

Republicans who voted for the plan, including Roby, have said passage of the CRomnibus avoided a government shutdown, and also gives Republicans an opportunity to readdress DHS funding in February — a move they believe will help them push back against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

“By temporarily funding Homeland Security, Congress can use the ‘power of the purse’ to rein in President Obama’s immigration actions in the new term,” Roby said. “I want to stress that in no way does the bill ‘fund’ amnesty, as some have claimed. To the contrary, the bill puts Congress in the strongest possible position to stop the President’s executive amnesty plans by setting up a showdown for when Republicans control the Senate and have more votes in the House come January.”

Several of Roby’s colleagues from the Alabama congressional delegation joined her in voting for the bill.

RELATED: Everything you need to know about the Alabama delegation’s ‘CRomnibus’ votes

However, among those who voted against the plan were Alabama’s two U.S. senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, both of whom said they opposed the final legislation because they believe it funds the President’s immigration executive order.

“The United States Senate – challenged directly by the President’s unconstitutional immigration order – has laid prostrate and defenseless,” an exasperated Sessions said after the bill’s passage. “Reid and his caucus have aggressively blocked a vote on my amendment to prohibit funds for the President’s illegal action.”

“The omnibus fails to properly address President Obama’s action to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants through executive fiat,” Shelby added.

But Roby and other Republicans who backed the plan say the difference of opinion on the CRomnibus is over tactics, not policy.

“The problem is right now we have the same number of Republican votes in the Senate as last year when the government shut down over our attempts to defund ObamaCare,” she said. “There are two basic reasons the defund strategy didn’t work last time: 1. Democrats had the Majority in the Senate. 2. The threat of shutting down the entire government allowed the other side to distract away from the failures of ObamaCare. Our plan remedies both problems by waiting three weeks until Republicans control the Senate and by taking a complete shutdown off the table to focus 100 percent on amnesty.”

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— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) December 3, 2014