The House will vote as early as today on a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, ending weeks of wrangling over a measure conservatives hoped to use to curb President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Republican aides told the Washington Examiner that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would take up the bill, which passed in the Senate last month, as soon as the paperwork crossed the Capitol.
Most House Republicans will vote against the measure because it leaves out language blocking President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. The bill is expected to pass only because Democrats plan to vote for it.
Boehner told lawmakers that even though Congress will not block Obama’s actions through its spending authority, a court-ordered injunction against President Obama’s directive will delay their implementation. This quote from the Washington Examiner shows how tricky things are these days in the House.
“I believe this decision, considering where we are, is the right one for this team, and the right one for this country,” Boehner told Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, according to a witness. “The good news is that the president’s executive action has been stopped, for now. This matter will continue to be litigated in the courts, where we have our best chance of winning this fight.”
Yesterday, Senate Democrats sent a strong message to the speaker by rejecting the House GOP’s request to go to conference to resolve differences between their two approaches: enough’s enough, time to pass a bill to keep DHS funded through September and move on. The procedural vote was 47-43, short of the 60 votes the conference request needed to advance.
After the vote at there were a number of Republican Senators who simply want to see the House get their act together. Speaking to a gathering of the media outside the Senate Chamber it was clear that frustration with the House was mounting.
“This sends it [the DHS funding bill] back over to the House and it’s in their court. They could change it and send it back to us. But we’ve sort of seen what the prospects would be,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said to group of reporters.
The funding for DHS will run out this week but it is expected as we have reported in this story that a clean bill will pass. It will be the same type of bill passed on Friday only this time instead of funding the DHS for a week the House will fund the department through September.