Republicans now realize they have no good way to stop President Obama's executive actions on immigration, so they've decided there's no real downside to allowing funding to run out for the Department of Homeland Security.
From Politico:
[L]eading 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.
Yeah, who cares about those 300,000 employees and their paychecks?
Apparently, even some Republicans are surprised at how irrational their colleagues have become just several weeks into the 114th. The increasingly small number of grownups in the GOP caucus thought not funding DHS last year would bring a sense of cohesion and urgency to the caucus this year around the DHS funding fight.
[T]hey were betting that even their unpredictable and restless rank and file would blink when it came to national security.
Bad bet. Senate Democrats put Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on notice yesterday that he wouldn't get any of their votes if the DHS funding bill contained riders—such as the anti-immigrant measures the House attached. McConnell hasn't yet indicated his path forward. But House Republicans are already saying they won't vote on a bill that simply funds DHS without targeting immigrants.
Senior sources in House Republican leadership are now saying they will not bring up a so-called “clean” DHS funding bill. They hope the Senate can insert some language to change part of Obama’s executive actions on immigration and are privately warning that a “clean bill will not fly in the House,” as one senior leadership aide put it. Several GOP aides said they were hoping the White House intervenes soon and accepts some changes to Obama’s immigration actions to avoid a showdown.
More magical thinking from the increasingly discordant Republican majority in Congress. They can't agree on a reasonable path forward, so they're looking to the White House to solve their problems. Fool proof.
