New York Times
By Ashley Parker
March 2, 2015
Senate
Democrats on Monday blocked a House attempt to force joint negotiations
over legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security through
the fiscal year.
The
vote, 47 to 43, again pushes the matter back to the House, where
Speaker John A. Boehner confronts a likely choice between persuading an
unruly group of conservative
lawmakers to pass the funding, without any restrictions on President
Obama’s executive actions on immigration, or building a majority on the
backs of Democratic votes to avert a partial shutdown of the department
before it runs out of money Friday at midnight.
Mr.
Boehner also could try to rally support for a short-term funding
measure, though that option would simply postpone the fight — and last
week, his effort to pass a
three-week funding bill led to a humiliating setback when his own
members revolted.
Though
the Senate last week passed a bill to finance the department, House
Republicans refused to take up the legislation, instead preferring a
bill they passed in January
that funded the agency but also sought to gut the legal protections Mr.
Obama has provided to as many as five million undocumented immigrants
through executive actions.
Hours
before money was set to run out last Friday night, Mr. Boehner, with
the help of Democratic votes, managed to pass a measure to fund the
agency for another week
— just enough time, he hoped, to devise a strategy forward. House
Republicans had hoped to enter into conference committee with the Senate
to reconcile the differences between their funding bills — something
Democrats had long made clear was unacceptable and
officially rejected Monday evening.
At
least some of the House conservatives who revolted against their
leadership team seem willing to allow a partial shutdown of the agency
in order to fight what they
say is the president’s unconstitutional, executive overreach on
immigration. The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative
lawmakers, met Monday night to discuss strategies.
“We
know that this is unconstitutional, and we know it’s unfair,”
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the
Freedom Caucus, said Sunday on CNN’s
“State of the Union.”
Heritage
Action, an outside conservative group, on Monday also urged lawmakers
to vote against any “clean” Homeland Security spending bill, calling it
“a blank check for
amnesty.”
But
many Republican senators are getting frustrated with their House
colleagues, urging them to fund the department and fight Mr. Obama’s
immigration policies at a different
time.
“I
don’t understand us, either,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican
of South Carolina. “I think we’re dumb as a rock to do what we’re
doing.”
Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, similarly urged the House to “do a clean bill.”
“Celebrate
the court decision in Texas and move on,” said Mr. Flake, referring to a
federal judge’s ruling last month that indefinitely halted the
president’s executive
actions on immigration. “Let’s get to some other priorities. ”
After
House Democrats helped bail out Mr. Boehner Friday evening, providing
him with the necessary votes to avert a partial shutdown, Representative
Nancy Pelosi of California,
the minority leader, told her members in a letter, “Your vote tonight
will assure that we will vote for full funding next week.”
House
Republican leaders, however, insisted that they had made no agreement
with Democrats promising a vote on a clean funding measure. But House
Democrats said they were
optimistic that their Republican counterparts would allow them to vote
on a bill to fund Homeland Security with no additional provisions
attached, later this week.
“We
strongly believe it’s even clearer now that the House bill has been
rejected for the fifth time by the United States Senate, and therefore
the only path to go down
would be to fund the Homeland Security Department,” said Representative
Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the minority whip. “If we do a
week or three weeks or nine weeks, at the end of the day, we’re going
to be in the same position, so there’s nothing
accomplished by going down that cul-de-sac.”
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