Democrats obstruct DHS stopgap funding bill — shutdown imminent
The party of ‘no’ strikes again
What a mess this has become.
Hell bent on pursuing legislation that would allow for the dissolution of Congressional powers (a.k.a. Obama’s Executive immigration overreach), House Democrats refused to pass a short term funding bill for DHS. The bill would’ve funded DHS through March 19 and prevented an agency shut down.
Unless a deal is reached and an appropriations bill is passed by midnight tonight, agency shutdown is imminent. Some 200,000 of DHS’s 231,000+ are deemed ‘essential’ and would remain in place in the event of a shut down (as they did in the shut down of 2013), as NRO noted.
Weeks ago, the House passed a DHS appropriations bill that sought to curb Obama’s immigration overreach. Since the House bill’s passage, Senate Democrats have continually filibustered, thus disallowing any Senate debate on the the House bill. Then, a judge in Texas issued a temporary injunction, preventing implementation of Obama’s Executive immigration action; the same executive action Democrats insist on implementing.
In an attempt to build a bridge across the impasse, the Senate passed a clean funding bill, creating a separate bill to address the president’s Constitutional curb stomp.
While the Senate was busy passing a clean funding bill to keep DHS up and running, House Democrats were actively whipping votes against the House stopgap funding bill, according to Politico. The Washington Post reports (emphasis added):
The House passed a measure earlier Friday afternoon to go to conference with the Senate to hash out the differences between their long-term bills. No Democrats voted for it. Senate Democrats oppose a conference.
Senate Democratic aides acknowledged that the bill would probably have passed their chamber if it had cleared the House.
Per the Washington Post, President Obama indicated he would sign a short term funding bill. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, “If president is faced with a choice of having the Department of Homeland Security shut down or fund that department for a short term, the president is not going to allow the agency to shut down.”
Bret Baier has the rundown:
We will continue to monitor the Democratic-led disaster and provide updates as they’re relevant.
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Comments
This, of course, is not the way the local news here is reporting this. From the reports here it sounds like it is the Republicans that are putting the safety of all Americans at risk.
The legacy media in this country sucks.
Thank you Ms Kaye from framing the headline the correct way. It was the dems obstruction that killed the measure.
*for
as usual WAPO and NYT are blaming the Repubs
THIS WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED IF THERE WEREN’T ANY REPUBLICANS.
Kabuki theater all the way down. McConnell, in cahoots with the Obama Democrats, deflected the blame for the shutdown from the Senate Democrats to the House conservatives.
This game can be played only because the ‘shutdown’ is an act, not reality. The real gem hidden by all parties in this mess is how ‘essential’ elements of any agency can accrue obligations against the Federal treasury without authorization to do so.
Congress and the Administration are both acting outside their lawful authorities.
The idea that DHS has 200,000 “essential” drones is pretty comical. I don’t think that word means what the government and the press think it means.
Accurate headlines like this are liable to get the new FCC Department of the Internets onto us!
Of course Obama would sign a short term funding bill. He knows the Congressional republicans are not willing to stop his executive overreach so any separate bill addressing that issue will be DOA.
The only way to stop Obama is to defund the agencies he’s abusing or attach strict limits to funding bills. If the republicans aren’t willing to take a little heat during the fight, they need to pack up and go home.
you could permanently shut down the entire DHS and never notice…
except for the smaller deficit, that is.
Of course, if DHS is shut down, you know Obama will use the opportunity to create the greatest inconvenience for the public, including utterly unnecessary and spiteful closures of recreational areas and the like. You remember the vindictive stuff he did during the last shutdown.
I believe that Obama and the Dems would welcome a shutdown as it would give them a twofer: (1) severely punish the voters who put the Republicans in charge of the Senate and (2) shamelessly blame the closed and cancelled services on the Republicans.
Why can’t the House leadership just get the Republicans on board on something – anything – that differs from the Senate bill in just a little way, and then push the real change through via Conference (that only requires 50% of the Senate)? It’s like they don’t understand the most basic way that the Congress functions. The Democrats didn’t hesitate to use those tactics with Obamacare…
“Why can’t the House leadership…”
Joseph, the republican “leadership” is as much for amnesty as the pResident. They just want the blame to go to the D’s.
It’s not enough that Democrats support premeditated abortion of America’s most vulnerable and wholly innocent on a pro-choice or selective moral principle, but they also support displacement, replacement, regulation, and taxation of American survivors of planned parenthood and the abortion industry.
So far, I think Kemberlee’s “Llama Drama” post is the only one you haven’t seemed to have been able to insert your usual abortion jeremiad into.
It’s not that I tried.
That said, yes, elective abortion of wholly innocent human lives; rationalized by a fairy tale and religion (e.g. pro-choice); for causes of wealth, pleasure, leisure, and narcissistic indulgence, is a preeminent concern. Don’t you agree?
Once again, Obama, the Abortionist in Chief, will shut down taxpayer funded government services in order to show Americans who actually rules in a democracy.
Everyone does remember that the U.S. Coast Guard is part of DHS, right? While the smallest of the five military services, it is the one that actually “pays dividends” to the taxpayers; the value of property saved almost always exceeds their operating budget, and while there is no way to estimate the value of the lives saved it has to be considerable. They maintain aids to navigation, ensure the safety of commercial vessels, and a great deal more. All of which is done with fewer active duty members, worldwide, than the number of police officers in New York City!
Not all of DHS is a total waste of money.
[End of rant.]
The US Coast Guard would not be a part of the micro shutdown. And they should never have been moved to DHS jurisdiction in the first place.
You have hit on the crux of the problem. They have rolled numerous agencies into one humongous organization that can be picked apart and sliced and diced by the Democrats. They can cry over a 1000 different injustices when in fact, this affects very little of this monstrosity. This one is truly Bush’s fault. A Republican who grew the government into his behemoth. And, it is run by a Democrat and staffed with Democrats who will make it look like the end of the world.
“his behemoth” should be “this behemoth”, although I guess both work equally well.
That’s not a reason to cave in to Obama and Reid’s demands. It’s time for the republicans to act like they’re the majority party and for the democrats to remember why they’re the minority.
What Joe said.
For over 200 years, from 1790 to 2002, the Coast Guard somehow managed to operate without the guidance of a “Department of Homeland Security”.
I daresay that if the DHS were dissolved overnight; someone, somewhere, would remember how that worked.
…and yes, the DHS *is* a total waste of money.
DHS is the ultimate in useless bureaucratic redundancy.
If the Republicans stick to this they damn sure better have some talking points lined up to show the country how evil the Democrats are. The GOP shut the government down once before and my God look what happened – they kicked the Democrats ass in the next election. God forbid that happens again! How can we live with that kind of success? They need to realize they won the election, and act like it. The majority of the people are fed up with these tactics-to hell with the media.
Republican leaders need to learn to coordinate brief talking points so it penetrates biased media. Of course maybe “our” leaders are only paying lip service to conservatives, and really want their “well we tried” surrender. Krauthammer suggested breaking the filibuster like Reid did and put funding on Obama’s desk. Apparently he sees the disaster of giving work papers to 15 million illegals.
(Mark Levin on Obama’s big plans for New Americans’ takeover of our country … protection for illegals —> citizenship, coordinated with La Raza. immigrant seedlings develop a country within the country, put Americans in the shadows, which is affirmed with every action Obama takes against Americans)
http://www.wcbm.com/upload/marklevinsuepayne.mp3
“Democrats are filibustering full (not “omnibus clean”) funding. The Democrat shutdown is holding government hostage to get illegal executive order social security cards for illegal aliens, who will then be able to receive up to $30,000 in tax credits.”
Or something more edgy and concise, but they need to be more like Schumer’s advise “the word we are told to use is EXTREME”, and Dems and MSM all chant the same message.
But instead we have Boehner and McConnell agreeing that the tea party and our constitution is extreme, so they pretend to fight the president, but it always seems designed to fail.
Democrats: “A Shutdown? Oh! It will be The Apocalypse! And, it’s all the Republican’s fault!”
Media: “Yeah, what they said!”
Congressional [RINO] Leadership: “We agree with them except it’s not the Republicans – -it’s just those damn Conservative Extremists!”
I guess everybody has read by now that Boehner and McConnell caved at the last minute. Gee, what a surprise /sarc
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/02/28/congress-funds-homeland-security-for-7-days/
Less “caved” than shanked, in the larger GOP sense. “Leaders” were not followed, and THAT’s a very good thing.
With the Democrats going nuclear this is obviously the time for Republicans to go nuclear and get rid of the filibuster, as Reid did. Then pass a Senate bill to match the House bill funding DHS but barring expenditure on Obama’s executive amnesty.
If Obama vetoes the bill, or dallies within the 10 day signing period, then DHS shuts down and it is clearly on Obama. If he does veto then just pass the same bills again so again responsibility for the shutdown is squarely on Obama.
How hard is that? It’s not like McConnell has to be a chessmaster here. He has a simple one-move checkmate staring him in the face and he won’t take it. Is it because, like Boehner, he is actually on Obama’s side on executive amnesty and can’t bring himself to side with the Republican base? His record on amnesty makes that likely:
http://jenkuznicki.com/2014/03/mcconnell-is-for-and-has-always-been-for-amnesty/