Can GOP stand up to Obama?

Senate Republicans appear to be retreating from their commitment to undo President Obama’s imperious decree of amnesty-plus-legal-benefits for millions of illegal aliens. 

House Republicans passed a bill that fully funds the Department of Homeland Security. But because DHS would be responsible for executing the president’s illegal amnesty, the House attached “riders” that deny the taxpayer dollars needed for that purpose. That is, all DHS’s security and enforcement functions would be paid for, but there would be no funds for registering illegal aliens, giving them de facto legal status, and providing them with social security numbers and work permits – activities that are not only outside the law but divert resources away from DHS’s lawful mission. 

{mosads}In light of the strong public opposition to Obama’s amnesty decree, the House GOP proposal ought to be a slam-dunk. Yet in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 54-46 majority, the rules require 60 votes to consider a bill. So Democrats are filibustering against consideration of the House bill – including Democrats who tell their constituents back home that they oppose the president’s unpopular amnesty. 

They are playing hardball because they believe that Republican opposition is weak. The Constitution gives Congress power of the purse as a check against presidential lawlessness. But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has foolishly insisted that he will not use this power if it risks shutting down the government. Thus, because current DHS funding runs out in a few days, Democrats are confident McConnell will drop support for the House’s amnesty-stripping bill rather than allow a DHS “shutdown.” 

The scare quotes are used advisedly. Even if funding runs out, there would be no actual shutdown of DHS’s national defense mission. All DHS employees who perform security functions – about three-quarters of the workforce – are considered “essential” under federal regulations. They would continue working; they simply would not get paid until the funding impasse is resolved. 

Moreover, Democrats expect the media will help them dupe the public into thinking that a “shutdown” threatens actual national security just because Washington politicians chose in 2003 to call their unwieldy new bureaucracy “Homeland Security.” Despite its name, though, DHS is a bit player when it comes to public safety. Our principal domestic counterterrorism agency is the FBI. Outside our borders, protecting our homeland is the job of the military and the intelligence community – which call in the FBI, not DHS, if there’s a law-enforcement angle to be pursued. 

Under the federal budget, the government will continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on homeland security no matter what happens to DHS funding. Furthermore, some of the DHS agencies that do perform significant homeland security functions (e.g., border patrol and immigration law enforcement) are precisely the ones that are not performing their missions under Obama’s non-enforcement policies. What will further harm those missions is not a lack of funding; it is the crushing burden of administering Obama’s lawless amnesty program. 

Unfortunately,McConnell may not believe Republicans are competent enough to explain these simple facts to the country. Republicans fear that a media sympathetic to Obama would hype the “shutdown” as a real shutdown that compromises national security. They fret that the public would be gulled into blaming the GOP (the guys who voted to fund DHS) rather than Democrats (the guys who won’t allow the funding bill to be considered). 

It seems not to matter to these Republicans that being blamed for the last “shutdown” – in 2013, over Obamacare funding – did no political damage to the party, which went on to a victory of historic proportions in the 2014 midterms. 

Evidently, McConnell’s strategy is to split off the amnesty funding from the rest of the DHS bill. He would thus try to force Democrats into a vote that would show their support for Obama’s unpopular amnesty, but also have a “clean” vote that would fund all of DHS – including the illegal amnesty, processing and work permits for illegal aliens. 

It would be a bizarre camouflage for surrender. Assuming for argument’s sake that it worked as intended, what makes McConnell think Republicans will be able to make political hay out of a vote showing Democratic support for amnesty? We already know Democrats support amnesty; besides, it is the GOP’s ineptitude when it comes to making political hay – in this case, explaining that any “shutdown” would be an illusion caused by Democratic gamesmanship – that has McConnell thinking he needs to retreat in the first place. 

Plus, the Senate cannot enact a “clean” DHS funding bill unilaterally. The House has passed a bill with riders against the amnesty. If the Senate won’t pass the House bill, it must persuade the House to pass its “clean” bill. 

The Republicans won their midterm victory, and McConnell became majority leader, because the GOP campaigned on stopping Obama’s amnesty. Yet, McConnell’s strategy would undermine House Republicans, who did what voters demanded. It would pressure the House to drop its riders. But many House Republicans would refuse to vote for a measure that funds the illegal amnesty. In effect, McConnell’s move would pressure House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to allow the “clean” DHS funding bill to come to the floor and be passed with Democratic votes over substantial Republican opposition. 

Were that to happen, the Republican base would be demoralized … again. It was just last December, in the “CRomnibus” debacle, that GOP congressional leaders colluded with the White House to enact a 2015 spending bill. The base complained, by doing this, Republicans forfeited for a year the use of Congress’s power of the purse to stop Obama’s sundry excesses. But senior Republicans promised that things would be different once January got here and the new GOP-led Senate took control. 

If McConnell backs away from support for the House bill to stop Obama’s lawless amnesty, if he proceeds with a useless show vote and a “clean” DHS funding bill, it will demonstrate that nothing has changed: Vote Republican … and enact the Democratic agenda.

McCarthy is a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.