Keystone Kops

2 March 2015

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

DHS Funded for the Week by Dysfunctional Republican Congress

The Department of Homeland Security (Heimatschutzministerium in the original) was on the verge of a shutdown last week, but an 11th hour vote by the Republican controlled Congress saved the day. They will get to try again this week to fund the department because last week's bill only provided enough money to run the DHS for seven days. It is a sign of just how inept the Republican controlled legislature is.

The nexus of the kerfuffle is the president's decision not to deport millions of people who have come to the country without documentation as minors. The GOP view this as an abuse of power, and therefore, want to fully fund the DHS for the year but include in the appropriations bill language that requires the deportation process to continue. The president and his supporters view such a requirement as legislative meddling in executive branch actions over which the president has discretion to act or not.

Were Congress to offer a "clean" bill, that is one without restrictions, the Democratic Caucus would likely back it, and the Democrats in the Senate would not filibuster. However, Speaker John Boehner believes that he needs his caucus to endorse the bill wholeheartedly. Therein lies the problem.

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a close pal of the speaker's, issued a statement that blamed the leadership's troubles on "a small group of phony conservative members who have no credible policy proposals and no political strategy to stop Obama's lawlessness." This is the dead-enders wing of the Tea Party that would say orange juice is purple if Mr. Obama claimed it to be orange.

The leadership wants to keep the yahoos onside because they still believe in the Hastert Principle (it isn't an actual rule); nothing comes to the floor without a majority of the majority backing it. Former Speaker Hastert believed that, without that, one wasn't really the governing party. In a two-party system, that might be true, but the House is currently a tripartite chamber. The Republican establishment is in alliance with the Tea Party, de facto, and Mr. Boehner cannot get something passed without the Tea Party and stay within the Hastert Principle. Any bill that does pass with the Tea Party's support won't get passed in the Senate where Democrats can filibuster.

The GOP leadership is trying to spin this as the president's fault. "We have a difference of opinion in strategy and tactics, but in principle we are united," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on "Meet the Press." ""We are united in the principle there's a right way and wrong way to legislate. Unfortunately, the president chose the wrong way." The president's wrong way, however, is holding up against Congressional challenges quite nicely.

This week will be a telling one. Either the Congress will pass a long-term funding bill for the DHS or it will have to stay late on Friday to pass another stop-gap bill. With each failure to appropriate money for the long term, the Republicans look less and less able to lead. This bodes ill for the party's 2016 presidential nominee as well as for Congressional candidates next year. There isn't much point to giving a party a majority if it doesn't have the capacity to muster that majority when it's needed.

© Copyright 2015 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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