“[The bill to defund the executive action] was defeated, but the Majority Leader [Mitch McConnell] changed his vote, so I think he’s reserving the right to bring that back up,” Capito, who presided over the US Senate vote on Friday, said.
Asked if the bill could be brought up for another vote when the Senate reconvenes at the start of the next week, Capito stated, “I imagine it will.”
US Republican Senator Susan Collins introduced the bill to defund the president’s recent executive action on immigration, which would allow some illegal immigrants to avoid deportation. The measure was originally an amendment to the 2015 funding bill for the UD Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency responsible for implementing US immigration law.
US Senate Majority Leader McConnell brokered a deal among Senate Republicans to remove the defunding language from the DHS bill, and received assurances from Senate Democrats that the bill to defund the executive orders could come up for a vote.
The Collins bill would bar the administration “from using funding to implement the immigration orders issued by the president in November last year,” Collins said on the floor of the Senate on Friday.
McConnell stated that the bill addressed egregious executive overreach by the president.
