House, Senate on DHS impasse: 'After you'
Three weeks before the Department of Homeland Securityâs funding runs out, Congress is skipping town for a long weekend â and GOP leaders in both chambers are pointing fingers at each other on who must find a way out of the logjam. Some on the Hill are predicting a âprolonged fightâ that may drag on even after the Feb. 27 funding deadline â a date that Republican leaders insisted on setting but have no clue how to meet. Story Continued Below The House has passed a DHS bill that would gut President Barack Obamaâs immigration policies and wants Senate Republicans to muscle it through the upper chamber. But thatâs impossible because of unanimous opposition from Democrats, who filibustered the House bill on Thursday for the third time this week. Now Senate Republicans argue theyâve done all they can. Itâs time, they say, for the House to send something else over. âIf weâre unsuccessful getting something passed here then I think, probably, the next moveâs over to the House,â Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas.) said. Spending bills typically originate in the House. But House Speaker John Boehner sees a different solution: the Senate putting together its own proposal to undo the jam. Still, the Ohio Republican admits he has no earthly idea what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plans to do with the Houseâs bill, now that Democrats have stopped it in its tracks. âHeâs got a tough job,â Boehner said. âHeâs got a tough job over there, I got a tough job over here. God bless him and good luck.â Meanwhile, neither the House nor Senate will vote on Friday, and they both plan to be in recess the entire week of Feb. 16. The stalemate between the two GOP-led chambers was all the talk of a nearly two-hour long Senate Republican meeting on Thursday that boiled over with frustrations about Congressâ predicament. Many of the senators concluded that itâs up to the House to figure out what legislation can pass both chambers â because blowing this Congressâs first major deadline is unacceptable, especially given recent terrorist attacks and the terrible optics of lawmakers failing to pay for the nationâs premier anti-terrorism department. âAfter Charlie Hebdo and the burning alive of the Jordanian pilot, weâve got to find a way to fund DHS,â said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). âWeâll let the speaker work out where the votes are. Because heâs got to herd 218 cats.â But no bill that the House sends to the Senate will be acceptable to Democrats if it includes any immigration riders, so Republican senators are prepared for a lengthy fight that may take the matter all the way to the Feb. 27 deadline. And right before the deadline, senators privately say, they expect enough bipartisan support to push through a short-term funding bill that is free of immigration riders but merely postpones the final decision. That could drag the immigration fight well into Republicansâ first year controlling both chambers of Congress since 2006. âWeâre going to be doing this for a while,â said one senator after leaving the private meeting. Thereâs at least agreement on that. One House Republican source said, âThere needs to be a sustained fight to make it clear Democrats arenât willing to put any limitations on illegal immigrants in this country.â âYouâre looking at a prolonged fight,â the source said. âWhere weâre going to be doing one-month bills.â Indeed an eventual short-term funding bill is looking more and more likely given that right now thereâs no Plan B and no fallback in the offing. And Boehner does not seem inclined to put together another DHS proposal that tries to thread the needle on his conferenceâs outrage on immigration. âSenator McConnell is trying to win the fight that we won in the House,â Boehner said. âThe House fought this fight, we won this fight. Now itâs time for Senate Democrats to work with Senate Republicans to stop the presidentâs unilateral actions with regards to immigration.â Except that isnât going to happen. Senate Democrats say they will accept only a clean funding bill with no immigration riders. They insist that they will block anything else the House sends over that infringes on Obamaâs immigration policies. Indeed, though they said funding DHS was gravely important, Democrats are eager to highlight the GOPâs divisions. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recited quotes from GOP lawmakers that highlighted the Republican turmoil, including a quip from Arizona Sen. John McCain: âIs that the definition of insanity, voting on the same bill over and over again?â Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the Republican strategy is âto put a gun to the presidentâs head and say, âBlink.ââ âBut no oneâs blinking,â he said. McConnell is now mulling one more floor vote on the Houseâs bill to prove to House Republicans that the fourth attempt wonât be any more effective than the first. But some Republican senators have had it with endlessly taking the same ill-fated vote. Asked what GOP leadersâ current direction is, McCain replied: âIâm not exactly sure.â âThis is the third time weâve demonstrated that thereâs not 60 votes,â McCain said. âIt would be a very serious error if we allow the DHS to not be funded, because we have significant threats to our security.â In Thursdayâs Republican lunch, some senators suggested that the House could take up a proposal from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would leave in place Obamaâs 2012 Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, which eased the deportation threat for so-called DREAMers, and focus instead on a broader immigration action that the president took in 2014. But Democrats quickly dismissed that plan â revealing a lack of flexibility that is frustrating many Republicans, who say Democrats have got to come off the sidelines or face the blame for a DHS shutdown. âThe Democrats are in the all-or-nothing mode. The people that play that game usually lose,â said a steamed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). âCan you imagine if Ted Cruz were saying this: âAll or nothing?â Yâall would be all over him. You need to be all over them.â But Democrats said this line of thinking is simply a deflection of the GOPâs responsibilities as the majority. âThe Republicans have realized their strategy is not going to work,â said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Manu Raju contributed to this report.