Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) blasted President Obama for issuing executive orders on immigration, saying it “rejects the will of the people.”
Sessions has been an ardent critic of the president’s plan to issue nearly 5 million worker visas to undocumented immigrants within the United States who have U.S. children.
{mosads}“Is Congress hopeless, helpless, ineffectual, unable to stop this? Absolutely not,” Sessions said on the Senate floor Thursday. “It has a duty to ensure this president has no money to execute policy that is contrary to existing law.”
Republicans have proposed funding the government through the next fiscal year, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, which will oversee the visa program. Both chambers are poised to pass that proposal by next week in order to avoid a government shutdown on Dec. 11.
Sessions said money is currently being spent to rent a facility in Arlington, Va., to process the immigrant worker visas. He said Congress should use its power of the purse to stop program because Congress has not approved it.
“People want our laws that are on the books now enforced,” Sessions said. “But this president rejects the will of the people.”
Obama said his executive order was necessary because House Republicans refused to take up a bipartisan Senate-passed bill that would have issued visas, provided a pathway to citizenship and strengthened border security.