President Barack Obama will veto any spending bill from Congress which might potentially restrict or halt the use of federal funds in enacting the president's executive immigration policy, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest warned Monday.
Basically, the president is willing to shut down the U.S. government to preserve his executive amnesty, which will protect up to 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation in the United States, Breitbart reported.
Apart from suspending deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, the immigration reform would also expand policy of "deferred action" on deportation of illegal immigrants who came to the country as children, as well as for parents of U.S. citizens and permanent legal residents, The Hill reported.
When questioned by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl about whether Obama would block a government budget bill if the GOP denies him the funds needed to provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, Earnest simply replied, "yes."
Despite Republican lawmakers' repeated warnings that Obama taking executive action on immigration will poison relations with the new GOP-led legislature, the president bypassed Congress and moved ahead unilaterally on immigration, granting what they claim is "amnesty" to people who came to the country illegally.
Earnest was also questioned whether Obama was willing to shut down the government if Congress passes a funding bill on Dec. 11 that would "tie the president's hands" on executive amnesty, according to The Daily Caller.
"I actually don't believe that members of Congress are going to be willing to go along with an effort to shut down the government over the president's executive action on immigration," Earnest said.
Currently, House conservatives are reportedly working on a government spending legislation that seeks to avoid a shutdown fight, but still allows the party to strike back at Obama's immigration order by making sure that "no part of any appropriation" could be used to enact his executive amnesty.
Last week, the Congressional Research Service also sent a letter to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announcing that Congress possesses the ability to restrict expenditures by an agency.
Meanwhile, Earnest had remained unclear on Nov. 20 about Obama's intentions before the executive amnesty announcement was made.
"So you don't rule out the President signing into law something that would undo the very thing he's going to announce tomorrow night?" a reporter had asked.
"Well, I think that seems--I think we'll have to sort of evaluate for ourselves what sort of proposals Republicans put forward, so I wouldn't want to hazard a guess at this point. But it won't surprise you to hear proposals that are floated like that certainly would not be among the kinds of proposals we'd support," he had responded.
