DHS shutdown averted as House passes “clean” funding bill

Boehner and other members of the GOP leadership in the House last Friday believed they had the votes for a three-week extension of DHS funding – they thought three weeks would give them enough time to negotiate with recalcitrant House lawmakers and with the Senate, which voted for a clean extension of DHS funding to the end of the fiscal year — but House members handed him a humiliating defeat by rejecting his three-week plan.

With the one-week extension running out, and with members of the caucus unwilling to countenance a three-week extension, Boehner decided to rely on the votes of more pragmatic Republicans, and the entire Democratic caucus, to approve a clean extension of DHS funding to the end of the fiscal year.

The House speaker’s move is a blow to GOP immigration hawks – especially since the Senate majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) last week agreed to pass a clean DHS funding bill.

On Monday, Senate Democrats blocked a House GOP effort to form a conference committee to discuss the differences between the House and Senate bills, thus leaving the next move up to Boehner.

Moderate Republican lawmakers were unsparing in their criticism of GOP legislators who were willing even to contemplate shutting down DHS as an option – let alone actually shutting it down. “You would have thought we were talking about renaming a post office,” said Representative Peter T. King (R-New York), who has been active in the effort to fund the department with no strings attached.

“I do give John Boehner credit for standing strong through all this and guiding us,” King said. “A certain group takes the party in this crazy direction and we end up coming back and doing the right thing in the end, with just political damage done along the way. Thank God there was no governmental damage done along the way.”

Conservative lawmakers were sorely disappointed by Boehner’s move. Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) said that the speaker had “just caved in” and that his strategy had clearly “failed.”

“Tooth-and-nail ended in here today,” he said, alluding to Boehner’s promise to fight the president’s executive actions on immigration “tooth and nail.” “Everybody kind of must have laughed to themselves when he said he’s going to listen and work with all members in the future. I don’t think a soul in there believed that story.”

Representative Steve King (R-Iowa), an outspoken immigration opponent, said that he was frustrated with the outcome, but that the GOP conference had succumbed to “the exhaustion of the relentless push and the strategic moves that were made in the Senate, and also in the House.”

King said he recognized the deep divisions in Republican ranks over immigration – and, by extension, over the clean DHS funding bill. “I think the mood of this thing is such that to bring it back from the abyss is very, very difficult,” King said.

Boehner argued that the fight against the executive orders continues, pointing to the ongoing litigation in federal court after a district court judge in Texas in mid-February issued a preliminary injunction blocking the executive order’s implementation.

Most legal observers, however, expect the fifth circuit court of appeals in New Orleans to overturn the lower court’s decision and allow the executive order to take effect.