HARRISBURG — Republican state lawmakers are demanding to know how Syrian refugees will be vetted and how Pennsylvania will afford the cost of welfare once they are here.

Gov. Tom Wolf said Monday that Pennsylvania will cooperate with federal efforts to re-settle some of the 10,000 Syrian refugees being welcomed into the country. Governors in 31 other states — including Maryland, Ohio and New Jersey — have announced they don’t intend to help the Obama Administration resettlement efforts. Among neighboring states, only Delaware has announced it will cooperated with the refugee resettlement.

U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Tuesday that Republicans in Congress are working on legislation that would hit the pause button on the refugee resettlement plan.

In Harrisburg, Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday were circulating copies of letters of protest to the governor and considering language for a resolution urging Obama to halt the plan to take in refugees. One hundred state representatives signed onto a letter urging Wolf to reverse his decision.

In the letter, the lawmakers said the conservative group Judicial Watch put the price tag of accepting 10,000 refugees at $650 million.

State Rep. Brad Roae, R-Crawford County, said he pitched a plan to tuck language into the state budget that would bar the state from spending money on resettled refugees. The legislation won’t fly because it would be vetoed by Wolf, he said.

Instead, Republicans have little recourse but to tap into the public pressure against accepting refugees, Roae said.

“Overwhelmingly, people are opposed to it,” he said, saying his constituents have weighed in by phone, e-mail and on Facebook.

Roae said Pennsylvania could get an outsized share of refugees because Wolf is in the minority who haven’t objected to Obama’s plan.

“The president could try to avoid a headache” in those states “and send the refugees to states where governors are not raising a fuss,” he said.

The Obama Administration has put the price tag for refugee resettlement at $1.2 billion. But Republican critics, such as Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, say those estimates don’t include the cost of welfare programs for the refugees. In a letter to the Senate appropriations committee, Sessions pointed to U.S. Health and Human Services data to show that 90 percent of recent Middle Eastern refugees are receiving welfare assistance and government-funded health care coverage.

State Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver, R-Northumberland County, said most people accept the state has little control over whether refugees come here or not. The focus, then, is turning toward accountability about how the public will be protected and what the costs of accept refugees will be.

“We need clearer answers,” she said.

Not everyone thinks Wolf and Obama are out-of-line.

Religious groups — including the National Association of Evangelicals and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — on Tuesday reinforced their support for accepting refugees.

The mayors of the state’s two biggest cities — Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — have voiced support for Wolf’s announcement. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto told the Associated Press he believes his city could handle 500 refugees a year.

While the issue emerged as an unavoidable topic of debate in the wake of the Paris attacks, not all state lawmakers were convinced it is something that should be front and center at the Capitol.

State Rep. Bryan Barbin, D-Cambria County, said lawmakers ought to stay focused on finding a solution to the 5-month-old budget stalemate.