Following last week’s Islamic terror attacks in France, Democrats are claiming the upper hand in the looming fight over the president’s executive action on immigration.
Democrats took to the Senate floor Monday to claim a House Republican spending bill aimed at defunding the executive action would put the nation at risk by threatening spending on the Department of Homeland Security.
“We shouldn’t even be debating the Department of Homeland Security in this moment of history,” Democratic Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on the Senate floor Monday, less than a week after a massacre at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
House Republicans late Friday unveiled a $40 billion measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security through fiscal 2015. The GOP also released a pack of amendments they plan to attach to the bill that would undo Obama’s recent executive actions granting work permits and federal benefits to more than five million illegal immigrants.
Because of the amendments, the GOP’s plan is almost universally opposed by Democrats. While it can easily pass the House, Republicans will have a hard time finding six Democrats needed to clear a Senate filibuster hurdle, never mind enough support to override a guaranteed presidential veto.
Such a scenario puts the GOP-led Congress in a spending showdown with Democrats.
Democrats Monday raised the stakes in the looming battle over the GOP bill, arguing the legislation would put America’s safety at risk at a critical time.
“The House will vote on a bill this week that threatens to shut down the Department of Homeland Security,” Durbin said. “That’s our agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorism. What in the world would lead House Republicans to threaten to shut down this agency?”
House Democrats also declared their opposition to the bill, and promoted a Tuesday press conference “to highlight the recklessness of House Republicans’ dangerous Homeland Security funding proposal.”
GOP leaders have little intention of engaging in a true funding showdown with Democrats over DHS funding. The 2013 partial government shutdown depressed GOP poll numbers and led many experts to predict the party would suffer in the midterms. Despite massive Republican legislative victories in November, Republican leaders are eager to avoid a spending fight this time, even if the battle would involve just a small slice of the federal budget.
The Department of Homeland Security controls a wide range of national security elements, from airport screeners to border security.
On Monday, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced that the department will step up security in the wake of the terrorist attacks in France. The measures include increased TSA searches and enhanced protection of federal buildings.
“Recent world events call for increased vigilance in Homeland Security,” Johnson said.
A GOP observer suggests comments like that make it harder for the GOP to take a stand on spending.
“The Republican leadership will not allow a shutdown of Homeland Security funding,” Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and former top Senate and House GOP leadership aide, told the Washington Examiner. “They know it’s important to figure out a backup plan to get homeland security funding signed into law quickly because they will be put in a politically precarious position if terrorist attacks happen in America like the ones in Paris.”
Republicans so far aren’t talking about a “Plan B,” however.
Instead, Republicans and leadership aides told the Washington Examiner they plan to pass the bill, send it to the Senate, and then discuss what to do next at a joint House-Senate retreat scheduled to begin later this week in Hershey, Pa.
It may be a heated discussion.
Conservative Republicans won’t go along with a bill that doesn’t block Obama’s executive actions on immigration, even if it’s the only way to get the DHS spending measure signed into law.
They are expecting the the newly minted GOP majority to uphold a promise they made in December to use the House’s spending power to block what many Americans view as Obama’s unconstitutional directives on immigration.
“Rather than discussing an exit strategy, the GOP should be focused on winning by making Obama’s position politically untenable,” Dan Holler, spokesman for the conservative political action committee Heritage Action for America, told the Examiner.
At the very least, Bonjean said, the GOP leadership, “must show conservative rank-and-file members that the attempt is being made to deal with the immigration issue.”
