DHS Shutdown Looms Again: GOP Leaders Scramble To Avert Crisis

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, walks to the chamber as the House failed to advance a short-term funding measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded past a midnight deadline, at the Capitol ... Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, walks to the chamber as the House failed to advance a short-term funding measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded past a midnight deadline, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday evening, Feb. 27, 2015. Conservatives in Speaker Boehner's own party fought against three-week funding measure because it would not overturn Obama’s actions on immigration. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) MORE LESS
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WASHINGTON — Call it a déjà vu week for Republican leaders.

They returned to Capitol Hill for the second Monday in a row staring down the possibility of a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security on Friday — and without a politically viable plan to avoid it.

DHS funding expires at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, after Congress scrambled to pass a one-week extension of the deadline in a chaotic day last Friday, when President Barack Obama signed the bill just 10 minutes before a shutdown.

The day featured 52 House Republicans voting down their leaders’ three-week stopgap bill, a rather public embarrassment for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). The saga has led to bitter recriminations and intra-party divisions both within the House GOP and between House and Senate Republicans — the latter are eager to put this fight to rest.

House Republicans still have no good options as they prepare to meet on Tuesday morning and discuss the path forward.

The underlying fight is about Obama’s executive actions announced in November 2014 to protect more than 4 million unauthorized immigrants from the possibility of deportation, which has sparked a conservative backlash. Dozens of House Republicans insist on withholding funding for DHS, even at the risk of a shutdown, until Obama effectively signs a death warrant for his signature immigration initiative.

The Senate kicked off the week on Monday afternoon by trying to bring up a House-passed measure to initiate a House-Senate conference committee and resolve the chambers’ differences. Democrats blocked the motion, adamant that they would accept nothing other than the Senate-passed yearlong DHS funding bill without any immigration restrictions. (The main legislation is bipartisan.) The Senate effectively sent the bill back to the House.

“This push by Republicans to go to conference is the very definition of an exercise in futility,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Monday. “Senate Democrats will not be a party to yet another Republican charade that will inevitably shut down the Department of Homeland Security and put our nation at risk.”

The sequence is eerily reminiscent of the fall 2013 fight over the Affordable Care Act: House Republicans voted to go to conference, Senate Democrats rejected it, and the federal government shut down. Democrats are rebuffing the conference committee gambit for the same reason this time: They see it as a GOP ruse to extract unilateral concessions from Obama by using government funding as leverage.

Boehner faces something of a rebellion on his right flank as several dozen Republicans are refusing to fund DHS without ratcheting back presidential powers on immigration. Privately, though, many Republicans recognize that a “clean” DHS funding bill is inevitable — there’s no path to overriding Obama’s veto threat. But the path to acquiescence is painful for Boehner.

“For a lovely dedicated gentleman from Ohio to be willing to take on everyone from Cynthia Lumis to Peter King, who I adore but rarely agree with, is herculean,” Rep. Cynthia Lumis (R-WY) told reporters. “So we know that John Boehner has been presented with an extraordinarily difficult task. What we also know is that Democrats are far more willing to fall in line behind Nancy Pelosi and whatever she wants than Republicans, who are very independent thinkers.”

One way this battle could end is if a House member invokes an obscure rule to trigger a vote on the Senate-passed bill. Typically the Speaker can prevent a full House vote on any bill, but as Roll Call points out, clause four of House Rule XXII provides that under rare circumstances a motion to vote on the position of the other chamber becomes “privileged” — meaning that any House member can force it. The DHS debate appears to meet those circumstances.

Immigration hawk Rep. Steve King (R-IA), conscious that the rule could pave the way for a clean DHS bill, introduced a resolution on Monday to choke off that avenue by suspending Rule XXII as it relates to DHS appropriations.

The debate raises difficult questions about the new Republican Congress.

“We have yet to prove our ability to govern the Congress responsibly at a time when the president is very philosophically different from what Congress is,” Lumis said.

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