Rep. Steve King (R-IA)
GOP leaders say they're going to block President Obama's executive action on immigration not through
impeachment or
a government shutdown, but by very specifically defunding the agencies that would carry out Obama's executive order. There's just one small problem. It turns out
Congress can't do that. According to a House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman, it would be "impossible," because Citizenship and Immigration Services is funded through fees, not congressional appropriations:
“We cannot, literally cannot, defund that agency in an appropriations bill because we don’t appropriate that agency. That agency is entirely fee funded,” Hing said.
Bahahahahaha. Even better:
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who wants to defund the order, said he didn’t buy the news.
Republicans were really
all-in on this idea that they could defund the order without shutting down the government. And now they've got like a day to figure out their next super-sneaky maneuver to ensure that Obama can't slow deportations. Or they can just keep insisting they can do the thing that's "impossible." Denying reality is a favored Republican strategy, after all.