Since he became House Speaker in 2011, John Boehner has been kicking the can down the road on everything but repealing Obamacare (which btw had zero chance of ever becoming law). Now, he's excoriating the Senate for not passing his crappy anti-immigrant bill to fund Homeland Security for a little over a month.
"We passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security six weeks ago—six weeks ago!" Boehner groused Thursday. "It's time for the Senate to Act."
Hey Boehner, how about the immigration reform bill you let languish in the House for a year and a half? That's the point President Obama made Wednesday when he was asked about immigration at a town hall hosted by MSNBC.
"It’s very simple: The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, refused to call the bill," Obama said in response to a question at an immigration town hall hosted by MSNBC’s José Diaz-Balart at Florida International University in Miami. "Had he called the bill, the overwhelming majority of Democrats and a handful of Republicans would have provided a majority in order to get that done."
Ohhhh ... right! Obama must mean the bipartisan immigration bill that passed the Senate in the summer of 2013 by a vote of 68-32, garnering the support of a solid swath of 14 Republicans. Boehner is apparently too busy sniveling about the DHS bill to recall the pathetic leadership he showed on a bill that could have averted this whole mess to begin with.
John Boehner had two chances last year to avoid the pickle he's in now. Option 1: He could have refused to allow the right-wingers in his caucus to separate out Homeland Security from the funding bill Congress passed for the rest of the government. Option 2: He could have brought up that immigration bill that he's so conveniently forgotten about now.
If Boehner wants someone to blame for this whole Homeland Security shutdown debacle, a mirror's never too far away.