House Speaker John A. Boehner, already under fire from unruly conservatives, is facing another agonizing choice over funding the Department of Homeland Security after Democrats thwarted his plans once again Monday.
Senate Democrats, as expected, blocked a House-passed bill to form a conference committee to work out the differences over competing DHS-funding measures. The move, coming ahead of a Friday-into-Saturday shutdown deadline, put the ball back in Boehner’s court just days after his stopgap proposal was stunningly defeated amid a right-wing revolt.
It’s unclear what happens next. Boehner (R-Ohio) is under intense pressure from a small but vocal coterie of rank-and-file Republicans itching to use the DHS debate to fight President Obama on immigration. Dozens of hard-line conservatives voted against Boehner’s three-week funding bill last week, raising a fresh round of questions about whether he could face a long-shot attempt to dislodge him as speaker.
At the same time, Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are already struggling to show that the Republican majorities in both houses can govern, so they can hardly afford worries about a shutdown to linger.
Exiting Boehner’s office Monday afternoon, House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) suggested that the speaker had devised a course of action, but he would not reveal specifics.
“The speaker is going to offer his advice and options and what he’s thinking,” said Sessions. Asked about the late Friday deadline, Sessions said: “I think we’ll act well before then.”
Democrats called on Boehner to hold a House vote on a Senate-passed bill that would fund DHS for the remainder of the fiscal year and that would not affect Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
But Boehner and his allies did not commit to doing that.
“We are disappointed that Senate Democrats have once again rejected regular order. Now, we will talk with House Republican Members about the way forward,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in an e-mail.
Few issues have animated the conservative base like Obama’s immigration actions, leaving Boehner in a tough spot. A combination of frustration over the substance of Obama’s directives, which include stemming the deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants, and anger over how they were carried out — executive maneuvers that conservatives say overstepped Obama’s authority — has been swirling on the right for months.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a hard-line opponent of immigration reform, expressed worry that Democrats would try to use an arcane procedural maneuver to bring up the Senate’s DHS funding bill. He offered a resolution to prevent them from doing do.
Opening the Senate’s business Monday afternoon, McConnell criticized Democrats for opposing a conference committee on DHS funding.
“It’s interesting to see the distance between rhetoric and reality with some of our Democrat friends,” McConnell said. “Not just on conferencing bills, not just on addressing the president’s overreach, but also with the use of the filibuster itself.”
Senate Democrats have repeatedly blocked a House-passed bill that goes after Obama’s immigration actions. They insist that anything other than a “clean” bill, with no immigration provisions, is a nonstarter.
“We will not be party to yet another charade by House Republicans,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) on the Senate floor.
If the House takes up the Senate’s bill, it could escalate GOP political tensions in the lower chamber. Conservative anger is already running high after Friday’s vote in which 52 Republicans joined most Democrats to sink Boehner’s stopgap bill.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a Boehner ally, said Monday afternoon that he would support the Senate’s clean bill if it comes to a vote, but he was not sure whether Boehner would bring it to the House floor.
“In the end, you end this thing as quickly and cleanly as you can,” Cole said, adding that separate courts fights against Obama’s immigration moves should assuage members concerned about the president’s actions.
It’s unclear whether Boehner will want to expose himself to more backlash from far-right Republicans who are not backing down. Speculation has run rampant in recent days about whether Boehner’s job is in jeopardy.
Because there is no consensus on a Boehner rival for speaker, the odds of replacing him with another Republican appear to be quite low. But even a failed attempt to remove him would be an embarrassing show of defiance when he and McConnell are still in the early days of unified power.
After narrowly averting a shutdown Friday when the House and Senate passed an emergency one-week bill just hours before the deadline, DHS is bracing for the threat once again.
“The fact that the president had to sign a seven-day extension does reflect an abject failure of the leadership in the House,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “But they have an opportunity to address that shortcoming by allowing this full-year funding bill to go to the floor this week.”
Sean Sullivan has covered national politics for The Washington Post since 2012.
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