I’m about to embark on a West Coast jaunt, so naturally, Congress is about to make travel slightly more difficult and confusing by hanging the Department of Homeland Security’s fate in the balance twoards the end of the month. Now, granted, the TSA will still get more than the required funding necessary to paw through my unmentionables in front of a handful of weary travelers at an ungodly morning hour, but I’m sure that, by the end of next week, literally everyone will be losing their respective minds over the prospect of DHS losting its funding, rendering the general public even less capable of handling basic instructions like put your shoes directly on the conveyor belt.
One person, at least, not worried about a DHS shutdown if Dems refuse to give up on executive amnesty is John Boehner, who, despite showing no trace of such a feature mere weeks ago, suddenly grew a backbone overnight, at least on this specific subject. When it comes to whether DHS will lose a small chunk of its non-essential funding over an immigration battle, Boehner is suddenly all, “go ahead punk, make my day.”
Speaker John Boehner says the House has done its job in passing a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and it’s Senate Democrats’ fault if the department runs out of money at the end of the month. And, he makes clear, he’s prepared to let that happen.
If funding runs out, the Ohio Republican said, “Well, then, Senate Democrats should be to blame. Very simple.”
“The House has acted. We’ve done our job. Senate Democrats are the ones putting us in this precarious position, and it’s up to Senate Democrats to get their act together,” Boehner told Chris Wallace in an interview aired on “Fox News Sunday.”…
“The Senate Democrats are blocking the ability to even debate the bill,” he said. “It’s their turn, that’s the way the system works. That’s the way the Constitution spells it out.”
You can almost hear the “I’m sorry, you lost” trombone from The Price is Right playing over that last sentence.
Ultimately, whether Boehner has taken the right tack on this is up to the parties’ respective public relations campaigns. Obviously, there’s a risk with blaming the Democrats, even if nothing major happens when they fail to come to a vote on the subject: the public could blame the Republicans. And it’s not as though the Democrats have gone out of their way in the past to minimize the obvious impact of such a funding failure (everyone remember when the World War II veterans were forced to storm the gates of their own memorial?). Of course, if Republicans stick together and stay united on message, the chances are much lower that Democrats can take the PR upper hand and blame them for, say, a disruption in the NSA’s ability to capture your phone calls with your sick grandma. But, of given that disparate personalities like John Boehner and Ted Cruz have both taken the hard line, it must mean the GOP’s finally figuring out that it has to stand united, right?
Hahahahahahahahahaha. No.
“The American people did not give us majority to have a fight between House and Senate Republicans,” McCain said, referring to Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate after November’s congressional elections. “They want things done. You cannot cut funding from the Department of Homeland Security. We need to sit down and work this thing out.”
Oh, well, at least we know Boehner can be persuaded. Occasionally.
