Republicans digging their own graves
Republicans have painted themselves into a corner – again.
Republican legislative leaders, who’d thought they were playing a legislative gambit that would make the president and Democratic members of Congress take the heat for cutting off funding to the Department of Homeland Security, are now realizing the American public might be able to see through that ploy.
The Republican-controlled House has passed a bill that’s designed to continue funding for DHS, but it added a “poison pill” to it. They attached a measure that would block funding for President Obama’s immigration action – even though it has no chance of making it through the Senate, or beyond the president’s veto pen.
Democrats want a “clean” bill that only provides funding for DHS. They’ve decided they won’t bend to the political pressure to do away with the immigration order.
Instead, since the bill has been sent to the Senate, Democrats have used procedural maneuvering to block the bill three times.
Without a vote on the bill, DHS will run out of money this Friday.
Although many of the agency’s 240,000 workers are considered critical (the Secret Service, border and airport security) and would remain on their jobs, as many as 30,000 management and administrative personnel could get furloughed.
Congress has known that this showdown has been coming for months.
But Republicans have been steadfast in their attempt to defund Obama’s efforts to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportations.
Getting Senate Democrats to vote against the DHS funding, and the president to veto it if it get to his desk, could’ve been considered a Republican victory.
Instead, it’s just another embarrassing impasse, in which House Majority Leader John Boehner is talking tough, but he knows his fellow Republicans have applied three coats of Dutch Boy on the floor in front of them, with no easy way out.
When asked if he’d be willing to let funding for DHS lapse, Boehner boldly replied, “Certainly.”
Boehner is one of a handful of Republicans who believe Democrats will take the blame if DHS won’t get paid this week.
But he’s putting on a good front.
In the meantime, the most vocal Republican hardliner, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, is finding cameras and microphones everywhere to express his dissatisfaction with, I think, anybody who isn’t Ted Cruz.
“For Senate Democrats, in a partisan vote, to filibuster funding for the Department of Homeland Security, is both reckless and irresponsible,” he told reporters.
That’s really rich.
He’s the same Ted Cruz, who spent 21 hours and 19 minutes, engaged in a faux-filibuster on the floor of the Senate in September of 2013, simply because he doesn’t like Obamacare.
His filibuster, which included him reading Dr. Seuss, held up passage of a spending bill.
That bill eventually passed the Senate 100-0. Even Cruz, himself, voted for it.
Some of his fellow Republicans considered that stunt “reckless and irresponsible,” especially for a freshman Senator.
That’s classic Ted Cruz.
He’s become known as a boisterous champion of something-or-other, but he’s had little to show for it – except for the antipathy of many of his fellow Republicans.
Cruz’s constant carping about the ill-effects of Obamacare, by the way, don’t seem to be taking hold among Americans seeking affordable health care.
It was reported last week that enrollment, and reenrollment has exceeded the Obama administration’s expectations.
Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling forthcoming about the legality of Obamacare, 11.4 million people have signed up for it, with even more people set to take part, thanks to an extended enrollment people.
Cruz is probably too busy kicking up dust about what he calls the president’s “executive amnesty” to rail about Obamacare these days.
Meanwhile, Republicans might be able to get out of that corner into which they gotten themselves.
A federal court has called a halt to Obama’s immigration order.
That means Republicans can submit a “clean” DHS funding bill that could reach the president’s desk by the end of the week.
But recent history has shown they’ll find a way to slap on another coat of that Dutch Boy.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net
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