House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Friday that a border security bill will be one of the first actions of the new Congress.

McCaul said the legislation would be part of a “constructive” response to President Obama’s actions on immigration that would avoid a government shutdown.

“I think one of the first bills you’ll see out of the box in the new Congress will be my border security bill,” McCaul said on Fox News. “Because until we get the security piece done, you really can’t talk intelligently about immigration reform as long as waves of illegals are coming in the country.”Republicans have been debating different responses to President Obama’s announcement Thursday that he will act to shield five million immigrants in the country illegally from deportation.

“We want to be constructive,” McCaul said. “We want to keep the government open but we want to shut down this…

A new paper by businessman and finance expert Scot Vorse throws an evidentiary grenade into the pending Supreme Court Case on Obamacare, King v. Burwell. The new information, published in a white paper from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “highlight[s] a growing body of evidence indicating government officials originally planned to offer Obamacare tax credits only on state-established insurance exchanges,” according to the accompanying CEI press release.

At issue in King v. Burwell is whether the 2012 IRS rule that provided federal tax subsidies to Obamacare enrollees in the 34 states that have chosen not to open their own exchanges is authorized under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The plain language of the law contains no such provision.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute disclosed when it released Vorse’s white paper on Thursday that it has helped fund the plaintiff’s legal expenses in King v. Burwell.

Subsidized premium payments…