House Republicans fear Congress will wind up ceding more power to Obama. | REUTERS GOP fears Obama's advantage

It’s not only the size of the sequester that has House Republicans fretting. It’s not like the GOP expects the stock market to plummet or furloughs across the federal government to drive up unemployment.

House Republicans fear the massive spending cuts set to take effect Friday will result in Congress continuing to cede its constitutional power of the purse.


Republicans are fretting that the $85 billion in cuts will transfer big power to the administration. Lawmakers say President Barack Obama’s administration will have unilateral leeway to shutter federal programs and spend the government’s money without any input from them.

( PHOTOS: Malarkey, baloney and frogs: Sequester quotes gone wild)

The argument is just emerging, and ignores the idea that many Republicans now support the sequester cuts as a way for the government to tighten its belt, barring any better budget-reduction plan. It also belies the reality that Republicans largely supported the sequester idea to begin with when it first passed Congress as part of debt ceiling negotiations in summer 2011.

But as the spending cuts become real, Republicans are crying foul and worry the sequester will be used to implement a host of Obama’s top priorities.

The GOP fear was cemented this week when the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency freed illegal immigrants who were detained — ICE officials said they did so to save money before the sequester hit. The administration denied involvement, but Republicans were buzzing that the executive branch and agencies will take drastic actions to force the GOP to the negotiating table.

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Some Republicans think Obama will add money to support his health care law.

“One of the things that they mention is that we’ve been able to control spending in Obamacare, and if we give [the White House] flexibility, they may fund all these parts of Obamacare we don’t want to fund,” Appropriations Committee Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said.

Others think the Office of Management and Budget will shutter programs in certain congressional districts to pressure lawmakers.

“I’ve watched this administration for two years up close and personal, and they will absolutely behave in ways that are intensely political,” Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) said.

“The president having ability to reprogram, which means the ability to punish his enemies and reward his friends, is beyond any reasonable constitutional justification,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said.

Both sides agree the sequester cuts are likely to take hold on Friday. What happens next is the bigger question.

The House Republican leadership is trying to help dictate how the Pentagon spends its cash. In a closed-meeting Wednesday, Republicans gave broad approval to language in an upcoming government-funding bill known as the continuing resolution that dictates funding priorities for the Pentagon once the sequester goes into effect.

“Let’s say you’re closing down a commissary one day a week,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “We want to make sure that’s what you do as opposed to reducing a training mission that would effect the readiness and the ability to deploy the right people to do the job.”

But the Senate has been cool to that proposal, and House Republicans are resigned to the fact that they might fund the government in a way that further peels back the power of Congress — a continuing resolution without any instructions on how the money should be spent.

“You got a lot of wasteful spending in [the Pentagon] — a lot of it,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican on the Armed Services Committee. “So if we give them [the administration] the authority to pick and choose programs, they might not make the best decisions. That’s what our role is.”

As the House faces the reality of the sequester, Republicans are watching with fear.

( WATCH: Sequester scare: Team Obama drives home message)

“Everything is a concern with this administration,” Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio) said. “There’s only so much we can do – everything is a concern. The president comes out on New Year’s Day and says something is balanced that’s hardly balanced — he’s the president of the United States and I respect the office, but it’s just hard to understand what these people may or may not do and that’s discouraging.”

The transfer of power from the legislative to the executive branch is a continuing problem; lawmakers say Congress is increasingly ceding to the presidency its most precious constitutional authorities, including its power over the purse.

In 2010, Congress forfeited the authority to earmark spending bills after a decade of scandals. Congress gave the Department of Transportation a pot of more than $1 billion for projects across the country. The money wasn’t even earmarked, and there was little congressional oversight.

This week, the Senate Republican leadership proposed giving the president the authority to replace the sequestration bill with one of his own that would restructure spending cuts in a more flexible way. In the House, that proposal doesn’t have legs and is unpopular.

“Just to give wide authority — I wouldn’t be supportive of that,” said Rep. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican in House leadership.

The whole idea of the sequester arose from an agreement in which Congress handed over more authority. The sequester came from the the debt ceiling agreement in 2011 in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to give Obama the authority to raise the limit on the nation’s borrowing — a power Congress has long held — with lawmakers retaining only the ability to overturn his decision.

It’s not just McConnell. Last year, Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a former White House budget director, introduced legislation that would have provided for automatic continuance of government funding to avoid the threat of government shutdowns when Congress can’t agree to annual spending bills. And Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) presented a plan that would have allowed the Treasury Department to prioritize debt payments in the event of a breach of the debt ceiling.

All of this points to another political reality that has taken hold in Washington. If there’s a tough decision to be made, lawmakers don’t want to be anywhere near it.

Having power means taking the blame when voters get mad. Like most of Washington’s dysfunction, the sequestration stalemate can be viewed through a pretty simple prism: No one wants the risk of responsibility for an unpopular policy.

Adam Snider and Joseph J. Schatz contributed to this report.