Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri
Within minutes of the Republican’s
failure to advance a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri took to the Senate floor to rail against Republicans for the doomed vote.
I’m a little confused about what’s happening right now. The Republican Party is in charge—totally in charge of Congress. Speaker Boehner and the Majority Leader McConnell—I’m sure their staffs talk on a daily basis. I’m sure they’re talking and coordinating and (inaudible).
The Republican Party now has the repsonsibility of showing this country that they can run Congress. So what do they do right out of the gate? They threaten to shut down the department of our government that protects our homeland, while ISIS is burning prisoner’s alive on film.
The irony of this is, Republicans are in charge. So all they have to do is present a clean funding bill for Homeland Security and the very next day take up immigration reform and debate it. But they are trying to play a political trick and trying to make it look like, that somehow, they’re disagreement with the president on immigration trumps the protection of our country and that somehow we’ll all go along with that…
McCaskill said that she wasn't entirely "comfortable" with President Obama's actions on immigration. But she added:
You know how we prevent that from happening. We have a House of Representatives that’s willing to take up immigration reform. This body passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill by a wide margin. It wasn’t even a squeaker… and the bill we passed here was amazing in terms of border security. But Speaker Boehner wouldn’t take it up. For more than 18 months, Speaker Boehner wouldn’t even allow it to be debated on the floor of the House.
So now that they’re in charge, do they take up immigration reform? Do they have a proposal? … You don’t like what the president has done. Then put up a bill and let’s debate it.
