We begin today's roundup with The Washington Post's
Eugene Robinson taking Speaker John Boehner to task for his attempts to link Department of Homeland Security funding with attacks on President Obama's immigration order:
This is not a dispute over money; the House isn’t being frugal. It isn’t even a dispute over policy; House Republicans could have a proper immigration debate if they wanted to by using as a starting point the bipartisan immigration reform package the Senate passed in 2013. Members of the tea party caucus don’t really want to take up the immigration issue, however. They want to stamp their feet.
And Boehner chooses to let them stamp away. There are those who believe Boehner to be a skillful tactician. I see, instead, a hapless substitute teacher whose unruly class refuses to come to order. At this rate, his only legacy will be his own survival.
Boehner's rightly getting slammed for performance as Speaker, and
Paul Waldman explains why:
[O]n the whole, Boehner is managing to combine legislative incompetence with PR incompetence. He’s already sure to be known as one of the weakest speakers in American history, for at least some reasons that are out of his control. But he might also be known as one of the least effective. Perhaps no one could have done a better job in his place, but since no other Republican seems to want the job, we may never know.
Much more on this story below the fold.
The Miami Herald:
Congressional Republicans bungled just about every chance to take action on immigration reform. President Obama, eventually, took action on immigration reform. So the GOP doesn’t want to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
Makes sense, no? Only in that parallel universe called “Inside the Beltway.”
Ben Jacobs at The Daily Beast:
Weeks after winning the Senate, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had a nice thought:
“We will not be shutting the government down or threatening to default on the federal debt,” he said.
With less than two weeks before yet another government shutdown, chaos remains and dysfunction is still normal.
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Boehner announced on “Fox News Sunday” that he was “certainly” prepared to allow funding for the Department of Homeland Security to lapse at the end of the month.
“The House has done its job; we’ve spoken,” Boehner said.
Actually, the House did not do its job, if the goal was to pass a spending bill that would assure the government’s largest agency, with 240,000 employees and a mission to keep the nation safe, would remain fully operational.
The Washington Post:
At this point, it’s anyone’s guess whether the stalemate can be broken. Congress returns Feb. 23 from recess, at which point it will have just five days to resolve the deadlock. House Republicans are so far refusing to budge, imagining they will be able to shift the blame for another shutdown onto the Democrats. This is magical thinking.