Republican Paul Ryan calls Obama immigration order a 'partisan bomb'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican Party's leading voice on fiscal policy, warned on Wednesday that President Barack Obama's looming immigration order is a "partisan bomb" that will sour his relations with Congress on a range of issues, including tax reform. Ryan, just chosen as the next chairman of the powerful tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, told Reuters in an interview that the move would signal that Obama intends to battle congressional Republicans for advantage in the 2016 election rather than work with them to reach compromises. "I think it would do great damage in his relations with Congress," Ryan said of an expected Obama move to allow millions of undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States. "If he chooses to do this, we will see this as a move for him to play 2016 politics, to try and help his party versus our party, instead of working and coming to common ground with Republicans in 2015 to get things done, which is what I think the voters told us they want in this very last election." Ryan declined to say specifically what Republicans should do to stop Obama from implementing the order, but said: "We're not going to have a shutdown" of government agencies. (Reporting By David Lawder; Editing by Sandra Maler)