Thread: Bill to undo Obama immigration actions, fund DHS fails in Senate test vote

http://www.alipac.us/f12/house-conse...y-bill-317050/

Had this bill had passed it would have de-funded the Obama Amnesty.

How anyone here can support not de-funding the amnesty is beyond me.

"Senate Democrats blocked passage Tuesday of a Homeland Security spending bill that would have derailed President Obama's order to protect about 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation."

URGENT ACTION Your Senator voted to block House-passed DHS bill from coming to floor for debate

Dear activists,

Earlier today, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered a motion to bring the House-passed DHS appropriations bill to the floor for a vote. This motion, which required 60 votes to pass, was opposed by every Democratic Senator and Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada. Sen. McConnell motioned to bring the bill back to the Senate floor, so future votes are expected.

Please send a fax to your Democratic U.S. Senator(s) and criticize their vote that puts amnesty and work permits for illegal aliens ahead of funding for DHS.

http://www.alipac.us/f9/house-votes-...senate-316795/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/gop-led-hous...macare-317284/

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Has A Ted Cruz Problem

FEBRUARY 03, 2015 4:06 PM ET
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Sen. Ted Cruz speaks during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is insisting the Department of Homeland Security not get any money unless Republicans get to undo the president's immigration policies.

Brendab Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

A bill funding the Department of Homeland Security failed in the Senate Tuesday because it would block the president's executive action on deportations. The question now is, what will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell try next?

The department runs out of money on Feb. 27. Texas senator and potential presidential candidate Ted Cruz insists DHS not get any money unless Republicans get to undo the president's immigration policies. That places McConnell in a dilemma — how does he placate Cruz and his allies while avoiding a shutdown of the agency?

"We should use the power of confirmations and we should use the power of the purse."

- Sen. Ted Cruz

Republican Cruz has vowed he will stop at nothing to block the president's executive action on immigration. And when you ask him exactly how he intends to do that, he says it's already in writing. Go look it up.

"I wrote a long op-ed two months ago, laying [out] precisely what we should do. We should use the power of confirmations and we should use the power of the purse," Cruz said as he slipped into an elevator at the Capitol.

His op-ed argues those are the two ways to defeat the president's executive action. Block all nominations, except those vital to national security. And deny funding for Obama's plan to defer deportations for some 5 million immigrants living here illegally.

Problem for Cruz is, he can't actually make either proposal happen.

"If you're a coalition of one or five, you can gum up the works for a little bit of time, but it's very hard to grind the Senate to a halt," said Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution.

Traditionally, the Senate does give individual senators some leverage. For example, Cruz could object to holding votes on nominations, or object to a bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security but doesn't undercut the president's immigration policies. However, it's ultimately up to the Senate majority leader to decide what actually reaches the floor.

"Mitch McConnell obviously has a whole range of incentives and a whole range of goals that he has as leader. He's not necessarily going to see eye to eye strictly with what Sen. Cruz wants to do," says Binder.

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Former Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sen. Ted Cruz listen while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

So Cruz has thrown down the gauntlet, leaving it up to McConnell to make the next move on the president's executive action. Last December on the Senate floor, Cruz said he'd give his leader the benefit of the doubt for now — and added this warning.

"I would note that a whole lot of citizens across this country feel a little bit like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football, where in fight after fight, leadership and Congress says, 'We'll fight next time. Not this time.' "

So what will that fight look like? The House bill defunding the president's executive action failed in the Senate Tuesday afternoon. After that, McConnell has exactly 24 days before the Department of Homeland Security runs out of cash.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says he knows how this story's going to end.

"We should pass a Homeland Security bill with no strings attached to it. That's where we're going to wind up," said Reid, on the floor this week.

McConnell has already promised there won't be any government shutdowns under his watch. But he hasn't yet tipped his hand on whether he'll allow a vote on a DHS funding bill that doesn't have policy provisions attached. There are plenty of other things McConnell surely wants to move on to, such as trade, repealing parts of the health care law and rolling back the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reforms.

But how do you solve a problem like Ted Cruz? Jeanne Zaino of Iona College says it's easy — just let Cruz, the potential 2016 candidate, show everyone he fought the fight. He doesn't actually have to win.

"His interest is in appeasing his constituents, appeasing the far right and appeasing his funders. And he's done a remarkably good job for a freshman senator at doing that," says Zaino.

The joke is, there's always somebody in the Senate running for president. And Democrat Tom Daschle, a former Senate majority leader, says those members are bound to be disruptive.

"They need to make statements. They need to be bold, and the Senate doesn't work on bold and declarative, stand-your-ground positions," says Daschle.

It's in fact the opposite, Daschle says. What McConnell's challenge is, is designing a counterstrike against President Obama that will actually garner enough votes in the Senate. Or wait to fight this fight another day.

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/03/383576...-for-mcconnell

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...curity-funding

GOP grows indifferent to Homeland Security funding

01/28/15 11:21 AM—Updated 01/28/15 12:07 PM
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By Steve Benen

Most recent showdowns on Capitol Hill follow a similar trajectory.

In 2011, for example, both parties agreed that national default must be avoided, until some Republicans declared, “Maybe default wouldn’t be so bad.” In 2012, both parties hoped to avoid damaging sequestration cuts, until some Republicans declared, “Maybe the sequester wouldn’t be so bad.” In 2014, both parties said they wanted to avoid a government shutdown, until some Republicans declared, “Maybe a shutdown wouldn’t be so bad.”

The pattern never seems to change.

Top Republicans are increasingly unworried about missing the Department of Homeland Security’s funding deadline.

The Feb. 27 deadline was supposed to mark the next stage in Congress’ fight on President Barack Obama’s immigration policies, but now, leading Republicans say the fallout would be limited if Congress fails to act. In private conversations and in meetings around the Capitol and on the House floor, top House GOP figures say most of DHS’s 280,000 employees will stay on the job even without a new funding bill because they are considered essential employees – though their paychecks would stop coming in the meantime.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) told Politico that Congress shouldn’t ignore the looming deadline, but if lawmakers blow past it, it’s “not the end of the world.”

If you haven’t been following this, lawmakers are dealing with another manufactured crisis: Democrats want to fund the Department of Homeland Security at agreed upon spending levels, and Republicans also want to fund the Department of Homeland Security at agreed upon spending levels – but only if they can destroy President Obama’s immigration policy, eliminate protections for undocumented immigrants, and make millions of immigrants eligible for deportation.

There’s not a lot of middle ground between these two points – there’s obviously no way Democrats will agree to the Republicans’ terms – and if Congress doesn’t figure something out, current DHS funding will be exhausted by the end of February.

Apparently, the increasingly common response from Republicans is, “So what?”

In the upper chamber, Senate Republicans leaders have already said they have no intention of allowing a partial government shutdown to happen, though some of their own members – most notably Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) – have said they don’t care if lawmakers miss the Feb. 27 deadline.

In case anyone’s tempted to think the Republican posturing is harmless, consider the interview Rachel did last week with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. Rachel noted that Congress is holding up funding for the cabinet agency, and asked, “Does that have a material consequence for your department yet or are you worried it will in the future?” He replied:

“Yes and yes. Right now, the Department of Homeland Security is operating on a continuing resolution, which means that we are allowed to spend money until February 27th – at the same rate we spent money last year. That means that as long as we are on a C.R., we cannot engage in new starts, new spending, new initiatives, new grants to state and local law enforcement to fund homeland security missions. We can’t put in place the independent panel that recommended changes to the secret service has suggested we do. We can’t do a lot of things for border security. Our counterterrorism efforts are limited.

“And my concern is that we not play political volleyball with our budget. We need an appropriation that is stood up on February 27th so we can go forward with a full year’s appropriations so we can fund these very vital things to homeland security.”

What’s more, let’s also not forget that if the Republican-led Congress balks at DHS funding, as part of some kind of partisan tantrum, the effects would be serious and immediate. Sahil Kapur recently explained, “[T]he agencies tasked with protecting the border and hunting down undocumented immigrants to deport would be harmed by a shutdown. U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection rely on appropriations.”

A few too many Republicans have apparently adopted a new posture: “We don’t care.”

Yep, "so what?"

"We don't care." Righto!

Not a dime, Republicans, not a dime.

You know it's really hard to fathom that we have 280,000 employees in DHS, which is a lot of suits and boots, folks, yet we still have 12 million or more illegal aliens in the country doing whatever they want, an average of only 400 illegal aliens per DHS employee, roughly 2 per employee per work day. To do their job, all each employee in DHS had to do was keep or help keep 2 illegal aliens per work day out of the United States. And based on their own figures, they couldn't even keep 2 a year out.

So I think this Department is just wasting our money and playing US for fools.