At the GOP retreat in Hershey, PA, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is delivering some sobering news to House Republicans about their anti-immigrant bill to fund DHS,
reports The Hill.
He told House Republicans not to expect miracles, since it would take 60 Senate votes to send the House bill to Obama’s desk, and McConnell only has 54 Republican votes.
“You look at the hand you’re dealt. There are not 60 Republicans, so you have to convince six Democrats to move with them,” said one border-state Republican congressman. “Pigs will fly out of my rear end before that happens.”
Careful there, cowboy, some of your colleagues who aren't all that grounded in science might think that's possible.
In its current form, the $40 billion funding bill would try to roll back both Obama's executive actions from last November and his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. About 600,000 Dreamers have already gotten work permits through that program, while another five million undocumented immigrants are estimated to be eligible for the 2014 Deferred Action for Parent Accountability (DAPA) program.
Please read below the fold for more on this story.
Both McConnell and the Senate's No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, are telling their House colleagues that they "need to lower their expectations." Sen. Cornyn spoke of changing the funding bill by amendment in the Senate.
“The expectation by the rank and file in the House is it’s not going to come back even remotely similar to what we sent over there. And there is a real reticence by members of our conference to allow the funding to lapse,” the lawmaker added.
Well, that's good news. Perhaps House Republicans are prepared to forfeit their anti-immigrant obsession in order to keep DHS funded beyond the Feb. 27 deadline. It's hard to imagine how Republicans would square a DHS shutdown with the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Europe more broadly.
Not gonna happen, says Sen. Cornyn.
“No more drama associated with shutting down, for example, the Department of Homeland Security. That’s off the table,” Cornyn told reporters. “Under no circumstances will we see any shutdowns,” he said.
Of course, this is a battle Republicans chose last year when they insisted on only funding DHS through the end of February.
Another option was for Speaker John Boehner to take immigration off the table by giving the Senate-approved immigration bill a floor vote before the end of the 113th Congress. He might have lost his speakership but saved the Republican Party in the process. So much for lessons in courage.