Reality check: Congress is running out of time, and will, to respond this year to Paris attacks

The dome of the Capitol with flags at half-staff at the Washington Monument after President Obama issued a proclamation as a mark of respect for victims of the Paris attacks. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

The House voted last week to indefinitely stall refugees from Syria and Iraq from finding asylum in the United States — an action rooted in public polling, 2016 politics and a desire for swift action, or the appearance of it, by the chamber that casts itself as the leading obstacle to President Obama’s agenda.

But now that the House is on record, and the political points scored, the question remains: What, if anything, can Congress do to stop a resolute president from continuing to take in those refugees? And, beyond that, lawmakers must ask themselves whether curbing the small number of refugees from those two countries is the most appropriate or legislatively viable response.

The most cynical way to view Thursday’s vote to halt the intake of refugees from Iraq and Syria is that the House did what it often does: pass a political messaging bill on the way out the door for a Congressional recess, knowing it likely will never become law.

Obama already has threatened to veto the legislation, and he appears unmoved by either polls suggesting the majority of Americans support the Republican position or the fact that 47 House Democrats supported it. Administration officials point out that fewer than 2,000 Syrian refugees have entered the U.S. over the past four years, and all of them go through an extensive 18- to 24-month vetting process. Moreover, none of the terrorists deemed responsible for the Paris attacks to date were Syrian nationals with refugee status in France.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has put the House bill on the Senate calendar, meaning he can call it up for a vote at any time. The bill, the American SAFE Act — short for Security Against Foreign Enemies — would require “unanimous concurrence” of the heads of multiple, relevant agencies on whether to admit a Syrian or Iraqi refugee and monthly reports from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to a dozen congressional committees on the ongoing vetting processes. This would effectively all but eliminate refugee immigration from those two countries by creating significant and perhaps unclearable hurdles for the agencies in charge of overseeing admission to the United States. But McConnell is up against a possible Democratic filibuster, which senior Senate Democratic aides say they can sustain — and also the reality of time, which Congress is running out of.

 

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