Immigration advocates may be the big winners in the budget showdown and President Obama helped put them there. Whether the $1.1 trillion budget bill passes or doesn't, Obama's executive actions on immigration appear to be bulletproof—something Republicans are finally starting to accept.
From Scott Wong at The Hill:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders have punted the funding fight over Obama’s immigration action to February, arguing their new majority will have more leverage to stop the plan dead in its tracks.
The budget bill will fund all agencies through September of next year, except the Department of Homeland Security. Its funding ends Feb. 27, (queue evil music ...) and that's when the GOP hopes to exact its revenge.
But it’s unclear how much weight the threat of withholding funding would carry. Eighty-five percent of DHS employees continued to work during last year’s 16-day shutdown because they were funded with mandatory funds or deemed “essential” to national security or public safety, according to figures the Congressional Research Service (CRS) tracked down for GOP lawmakers.
Drat. Foiled again. During the shutdown last year, just 15 percent of DHS workers were furloughed. And of the employees that will be critical to carrying out Obama's initiatives—those at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—around 90 percent continued working.
This seems to be one of the smartest political moves Obama has made in his second term, not to mention that it was the right one to do. Finally, the president is playing offense and the Republicans are beside themselves.
It's also a lose-lose for the GOP. Why would they cut funding for DHS—the agency in charge of border security? Won't their base be up in arms? They did just run all those scary "ISIS is coming across the southern border" ads.
And if they successfully find a way to blunt Obama's executive actions on immigration, good luck making amends with Latino voters, a constituency that will eventually be a voting juggernaut.