Boehner warns Obama on immigration
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- In a blunt post-election warning, House Speaker John Boehner
cautioned President Barack Obama on Thursday against taking sweeping
action on immigration without congressional approval, saying "when you
play with matches you take the risk of burning yourself."
"And
he's going to burn himself if he continues to go down this path," the
Ohio Republican said at his first news conference after elections in
which Republicans captured control of the Senate that meets in January
and emerged with their largest majority in the House in at least 70
years.
Obama has said he intends to reduce deportations of immigrants who are working yet living illegally in the United States.
Boehner
made his comments one day before he and the other congressional leaders
head to the White House for a lunch meeting with Obama. Even before the
new Congress convenes, the outgoing one is scheduled to meet next week
to wrap up business left over from the past two years.
Sketching
an early agenda for 2015, Boehner said the Congress that convenes in
January hopes to pass legislation approving construction of the
long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline planned to carry Canadian oil to the
United States.
At the White House, spokesman
Josh Ernest was equivocal about whether the president might sign a bill
along those lines. "We'll consider any sort of proposals that are passed
by Congress, including a rider like this, that ... does seem to pretty
directly contradict the position that's been adopted by this
administration," he said.
Boehner also
mentioned bills to help create jobs and a measure to encourage
businesses to hire veterans and several to attack the health care law
piecemeal.
Boehner, just shy of his 65th
birthday, won a 13th term from the voters in western Ohio on Tuesday.
Despite widely publicized difficulties managing his fractious rank and
file in the past four years, he is assured of a new term as speaker when
Congress convenes in January.
This time,
unlike the others, the man in charge of the Senate's agenda will be a
Republican. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the incoming majority leader, is from
Kentucky, a state that neighbors Ohio.
Even
before confronting Democrats and the White House, the two are likely to
face a steady stream of management challenges from within as they pursue
a GOP agenda.
Among them are a strong
presence of tea party-backed lawmakers in both houses, softer-edged,
conservative swing-state senators who will be on the ballot in 2016, and
a group of presidential hopefuls that includes Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas,
Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul from McConnell's own state of
Kentucky.
Boehner defended most of the
newcomers to the ranks of House Republicans after he was asked about one
who has said Hillary Rodham Clinton is the "antichrist" and another who
said family members of victims of the Sandy Hook elementary shootings
should get over the experience.
"When you look at the vast majority of the new members that are coming in here, they're really solid members," he said.
Boehner's news conference followed McConnell's first post-election meeting with reporters by one day.
So far, neither man has made much of what is expected to be an all-out Republican assault on federal deficits.
The
party has passed budgets through the House in recent years that
eliminate deficits in a decade. The likely chairman of the Senate Budget
Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said in a pre-election
interview that was his timetable as well.
Achieving
that goal without tax increases will require significant savings from
benefit programs like food stamps, welfare and possibly Medicare and
Social Security over the next decade.
At his
news conference, Boehner also said Congress will vote to repeal the
health care law that stands as Obama signature domestic accomplishment,
but Boehner conceded the measure may not clear the Senate despite a new
GOP majority. Democrats will have more than enough seats to block
passage.
Instead, the speaker said the
Republican-controlled Congress might seek piecemeal changes in the law,
which he said repeatedly "is hurting our economy." He mentioned
measures to repeal a medical device tax, abolish an advisory board that
is charged with recommending cuts to Medicare in future years, and
repealing a requirement for individuals to purchase coverage.
The
first is a provision that many Democrats oppose and have indicated
privately they would like to jettison. Abolition of the second would
greatly undercut the legislation's claimed deficit savings in future
years. Obama made it clear on Wednesday at a White House news conference
he opposes ending the coverage requirement.
Despite
Obama's remarks, Boehner said, "There are bipartisan majorities in the
House and Senate to take some of these issues out of `Obamacare.' We
need to put them on the president's desk and let him choose."
