Senate Passes A Clean DHS Funding Bill while House Republicans Consider "Options"
House Republicans don't grok that there is no way to win this fight
With Ted Cruz busy making love to Sean Hannity at CPAC, Senate Republicans moved this morning to approve
funding for the Department of Homeland Security, less than 24 hours before a shutdown. This bill, that'll basically fund the DHS for the rest of the year, passed 68-31.
The Senate also held a separate vote to move forward with a measure from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to halt Obama's 2014 executive actions on immigration, which Democrats agreed not to block in the future as long as DHS had been fully funded first. That motion, as per the Huffington Post, failed to get the 60 votes it needed to go ahead, with a tally of 57-42.
Huff Post explains that Collins' bill would have stopped two policies that have been temporarily halted in the courts: the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program and an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The programs are aimed at allowing parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents or undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to remain in the U.S. with three years' work authorization.
Now the ball is in the House's court where Republicans have not yet grokked that their strategy of tying funding for DHS with defunding Obama's executive action can't possibly prevail. Contrary to the Senate vote, they are not prepared to extend DHS funding for the whole year, just for three weeks, so that the agency can operate while they think of other ways to kill Obama's executive "amnesty."
But barring a coup to eject Obama from the White House and deporting him back to Kenya so that he can't use his veto authority, I can't imagine what they might be.
Perhaps H&R readers can help.