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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