Amateur Hour on DHS Funding

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Mr. Deez, Feb 27, 2015.

  1. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The GOP is screwing up a budget battle . . . again. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/26/house_moves_for_short-term_dhs_funding_fix.html

    A brief recap, a couple of months ago, Congress passed legislation to fund all of the government through the fiscal year except for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is funded through the end of February. The House passed legislation to fund DHS for the rest of the year but denies funding for Obama's executive action on immigration. Democrats are blocking that bill in the Senate, demanding a so-called "clean" funding bill (meaning a bill that funds DHS without any conditions). Senate Republicans never liked the House's strategy (if you can call it that) and forged a deal with Democrats to allow a vote on a "clean" bill but also allow a vote to legislatively overturn Obama's immigration action. House Republicans now want a very short term funding bill for DHS to give more time to go to conference with the Senate to form a compromise bill. in other words, they want to kick the can down the road a few weeks. Senate Democrats say they will block any measure to go to conference.

    A few things I wonder about . . .

    First, why didn't House and Senate Republicans work out their intra-party dispute and form a political strategy in private before even engaging this issue? Did they really not see this coming? They look like a bunch of disorganized clowns. The fact that Mitch McConnell is working closer with Harry Reid than with John Boehner on this issue is laughable.

    Second, the GOP in general needs to completely overhaul the way it handles budget fights of any kind. I'll admit that they've got it tough. Democrats are the ones filibustering and stopping a conference committee, so procedurally, they're the ones pushing for a shutdown. Nevertheless, the GOP is going to get blamed as it always does. A big part of it is the media. Their partisanship and bias come out during budget fights more than at any other time. They do nothing but spout Democratic talking points and partisan BS in these situations to the point of absurdity. However, the GOP does nothing to help itself. There's no serious strategy and no coherent message for the public. Every time they have a budget fight, they look like it happened suddenly and like they've never been in a budget fight before. Also, if a terrorist attack of any kind takes place during a DHS shutdown, I don't even want to think about how bad the GOP will look as a result. It'll be a political catastrophe.

    Third, the GOP has a way out of this, and they're not taking it. The House GOP's brainless strategy leads to a politically damaging shutdown that will ultimately end with capitulation. It's stupidity to the extreme. The Senate GOP's strategy has better optics (bipartisan and no shutdown), but it's a capitulation as well that will benefit Democrats more than anybody. The separate bill to kill the immigration action might pass through Congress (and even have some moderate Democratic votes), but it will be vetoed with no chance of being overriden, so the end result is that DHS will be funded and the immigration action will not get stopped. The bottom line is that they are going to cave 100 percent on the actual legislation no matter what. It's only a matter of how bad they will look along the way.

    However, in the background of all this horsecrap is that US District Judge Andrew Hanen struck down the immigration action and rightly so. That should be the way out. Congress should fund the DHS and let the courts handle the immigration action. Yes, Obama says he's pushing on, but if he does, Judge Hanen could and should hold him in contempt. That does far more to stop the immigration action and is much smarter politics. Leave this issue in the courtroom.

    Ugh.
     
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  2. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    Solid write up as usual. I keep asking myself what the republican motivation is for acting the way that they do, especially in the house. I keep going back to primaries and how its a race to the far right and anything seen as compromising with democrats will cost you your job. Maybe I'm giving the democrats politicking abilities too much credit, but they seem to have a way to draw the pubs into a fight on the issues where the democrats clearly have the upper hand knowing full well that the pubs can't just agree with them. In this case the house/senate pubs don't share the same strategy, DHS isn't largely hated by the public, and there's always the chance they can blame a future incident on the pubs. That's a terrible national image issue for the republicans. BUT going along with anything the dems bring up will cost them in a primary and many of them are from gerrymandered districts where they face no real competition from a democrat so they don't care. The national image issue doesn't affect them on a personal level nearly as much as their next primary. Thoughts?
     
  3. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Larry, I think you are correct about the primary election dynamics, but the strategy still doesn't make sense, because eventually they will fold. They will have the ability to grandstand, but at the end of the day, they cannot win this battle or even make a serious dent. So they're going to be called RINOs and sellouts anyway. It's a lose-lose situation, and yes, the Ds have a remarkable ability to draw them into this kind of situation.

    Nevertheless, the beauty of the court angle is that it turns a loss into an opportunity. They could still grandstand, but they could couch their rhetoric in the context of Obama refusing to enforce the law (a very legitimate criticism in this context) and bring with them the credibility of a federal judge. Furthermore, the media doesn't cover judicial rulings the same way. You've got an objective court order to discuss, so there's less room for editorial bull crap. Furthermore, by moving the focus to the courts and away from Capitol Hill, there's less risk of some brainless knuckle-dragging Neanderthal with a bad comb-over saying something stupid about Mexicans. You have to have a brain to discuss a court ruling.
     
  4. theiioftx

    theiioftx Sponsor Deputy

    99% of the American public will only hear that the mean Republicans tries to shut down DHS. They will not understand or know that it is about the larger issue of the President violating the constitution. I agree with Deez, this can and should be handled by the courts.
     
  5. nashhorn

    nashhorn 5,000+ Posts

    The stupidity of the GOP, particularly in the leadership simple amazes me. How a situation can be totally reversed like this and they still get the blame - first when in the minority the GOP was blocking the budget, now the Dems are in the minority and blocking but they manage to convincingly argue the public into believing it's the GOP who's blocking. I just don't get it. True the media marches to the Dem drum but I cannot see why, in this instance, the GOP did not pre-plan for the argument they needed to make and the argument they had to see coming. They should have media blitzed the heck out of this with clear explanation of what was going on and about to happen.
    Stupid, just plain stupid. And it happens again and again.
    Personally I do not have a brain capable of arguing the court issues but in my gut I do not believe there will be a denial of any of Obama's agenda items by any court. The man lives by a different set of rules and under a blessed star, or something of that nature. Everytime things look like they might be pulled back on him he gets through it unscathed.
     
  6. Bevo's Incognito

    Bevo's Incognito < 25 Posts

    DHS should be shut down.

    http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/25/lets-just-kill-homeland-security-already


     
  7. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    I don't disagree, but that's somewhat of a side issue here. Nobody wants to dump DHS by defunding it. Furthermore, I doubt you'd find much support for completely eliminating all border controls and customs enforcement. If we were going to dump DHS, we'd have reorganize those programs into other departments. That's not going to happen in a budget fight. Besides, neither party is going to want to eliminate DHS's spending, and the Democrats aren't going to want to shitcan the 250K employees (many of whom are unionized) who work for DHS.
     
  8. Bevo's Incognito

    Bevo's Incognito < 25 Posts


    Agree. Bush and Co. should have thought of this before they created this fiscal monstrosity.
     
  9. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    To be fair, this is an area where the GOP did at least try to be better than the Democrats. One thing that actually was debated was whether or not to nationalize airport security, which meant hiring thousands of unionized federal employees. Dems of course supported doing so, and the GOP opposed it. The Dems (who controlled the Senate) prevailed on that issue. And of course, those employees formed what is now the TSA.
     
  10. pasotex

    pasotex 2,500+ Posts

    I do not think it should be shut down, but it should be tremendously downsized. I am not sure what to do about the TSA. They suck private or public.
     
  11. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    As much flack as the TSA gets (some of it deserved), like the IRS, they've got a tough job. The politicians tell them to do something that's difficult to do without pissing some people off (TSA - keeping dangerous people and items off of aircraift; IRS - collecting as much tax revenue as a very complicated tax code allows), yet the politicians ***** when those agencies do the jobs that the law requires them to do. And what would happen if the TSA decided to get more lax to reduce headaches at airports and then a terrorist attack or hijacking occurred? People would flip out. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
     
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  12. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    I read this article on Politico, and if this is accurate, the situation is actually worse than I thought. Apparently, what really hurt them wasn't even going after the 2014 executive action, which actually had a chance to get some Democratic votes. It was going after crap from 2012 that has much broader support. They're just horrendously bad at strategy.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/obama-republicans-dhs-spending-115632.html?hp=t4_r

    I have a problem believing that the Tea Partiers on Capitol Hill actually think this is good for them. They have to know this will get ugly in the end. Furthermore, I would think these guys could look to the 2016 election. To hold their majority in the Senate, they need to hold their blue state GOP senators (specifically, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Mark Kirk, and even Marco Rubio). For those guys to win, they have to be perceived as consensus builders and problem solvers, not ignorant and reckless ideological crusaders. Obviously, they can break with the rest of the GOP on some of these issues. However, if the brand gets poisoned enough, they'll still be in trouble.
     
  13. BevoBeef

    BevoBeef 250+ Posts

    On Sunday TV news show, the House whip Scaliise kept repeating the vote on Monday [tomorrow] to try to get the Senate clean DHS bill into conference. If that could happen and some kind of compromise could come out of conference to pick up a few Senate Dems vote, then there might be success yet.

    I do not think there was any goal to get a bill passed. IMHO, success by the House bill would be to get some vulnerable senators on record to pass a clean DHS bill and reject a bill out of conference with some mention of the immigration stance. Vulnerable senators are of course those up for reelection in 2016. It is the 2016 election result that is the real goal. Keep the immigration issue in front for discussion as long as you can to minimize the bully pulpit effect of the presidency. Senator Reid succeeded in giving Obama the bull horn in controlling the choice of discussion subject matter by the mass media to discuss nothing about the House bills that never came up for debate in the Senate. The House Republicans are losing the battle about their unity in the media, but they are winning the battle to keep talking about the over-reach of executive action. If you keep yelling out that there is presidential misuse of his powers, the more will begin to believe that it is a fact. The trick is to force the media to pick the topics that you think you can win on in the next election. The real battle to win for the Republicans is the presidency in 2016. Nothing is going to be accomplished in the last two years of Obama's term, but each veto will keep the light shining on the topic that the Republicans want in front of the voters.

    Yes, the actual success on the immigration executive order will be controlled by the Supreme Court and also as long a delay possible for not accepting applications for immigrants to stay in this country. However leaving it to the courts will not succeed in maximizing the exposure of this issue to the voters.
     
  14. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Bevo, I get where you're coming from, but they needed the strategy determined from the beginning. We shouldn't be in a position in which the House is scrounging around to get a one-week extension passed. That's just not going to end well for them. A clean bill will ultimately get passed, and it will simply look like they got rolled by Reid and Obama. They would have been better off just passing a clean bill in the first place or if they were going to engage the immigration element, doing so only on a limited basis.

    I don't think any of this is going to keep Obama's overreach as the primary narrative from this battle for several reasons. First, the media is going to fight that. They are in the bag for the Democrats (especially on the issue of immigration), and they're not going to frame any issue in a way that's favorable to Republicans.

    Second, the GOP is fundamentally disorganized and divided on the issue, so even if the media wanted to be fair to them, it wouldn't do much for them. You have the donor class of Republicans who want cheap labor for large business interests and don't care how they get it, and obviously they privately like what Obama did even if the don't like the method. You have grassroots hardliners who want a closed border and want to deport everybody in the country illegally. And of course, you've got everything in between. With that kind of division, they're going to have a hard time driving much of a message.

    Third, the Republicans who are on the side of securing the border are a public relations dumpster fire, because they either support deporting everybody (which is going to be spun as racist) or at best, doing nothing with those already in the country (which is going to be spun as irresponsible and unfair).

    Finally, if they really want to put Obama's overreach at the forefront, they would have to come up with an immigration solution fo their own. I think part of what made Obama's action tolerable to many people is that the system's a mess, and there's no leadership coming from anywhere else on the issue. The GOP needs a credible plan of its own that secures the border but also deals with the illegal immigrants in the country without granting full citizenship, which is obviously what Democrats want.
     
  15. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    I couldn't agree more. The American public wants a solution to this yet the Right continues to stonewall because they are so divided. Obama's actions simply rallied his base (see the poll number bump?) while continued to keep an issue that Republicans have no interest in addressing at the forefront.
     
  16. Dobeyville

    Dobeyville < 25 Posts

    Republicans are cowards. McConnell could have a vote to make it a simple majority vote but he won't. Make the POTUS veto the bill and lay the blame at his feet, make him accountable for something. Note to Republicans: "he is not running again in 2016!"
     
  17. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Scrapping the 60 vote cloture rule is great until the other party takes control of the Senate. Then it really, really sucks.
     
  18. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    The Dems broke the seal on that and now it is fair game to use when needed.(cloture bypass) Precedents are a *****.

    The DHS needs to follow the law or face de-funding of the areas in which they choose not to follow the law. Choices have or at least should have repercussions.

    Hearing Senator Reid begging for swift action on the votes recently was delicious.
     
  19. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    Agreed. The Dems should simply have waited their turn to paralyze our judicial system by refusing to allow any votes on Judicial Nominees. Afterall, 6yrs into Obama's presidency the Senate already had 78 failed cloture votes (to end the debate) compared to 38 for the prior admins full 8 years. What tremendous partnership from the Republican party.

    With that said, when the Dems went "nuclear" to get some votes on judicial nominees they should have expected the Repus would use it at their leisure.
     
  20. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    The precedent is broken. Now there is a different party in control who should get the same courtesy of the new rules post precedent being broken.
     
  21. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The Senate is supposed to be a place of unlimited debate as a general rule. That's one of the fundamental differences between it and the House. The House is supposed to be a majority-rule institution in which the party in charge can run over the opposition, but the Senate is supposed to temper that with unlimited debate and stronger minority powers. We shouldn't tamper with that.

    The Democrats were very wrong to do it with the judicial nominations. They did "break the seal," and when the GOP regains the White House and controls the Senate, I think they should make the Democrats regret what they did by appointing staunch conservatives to the bench and tell the Democrats to go f--- themselves. However, the GOP shouldn't make the problem worse by expanding the scope of issues in which the Senate turns itself into the House.
     
  22. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    The Dems were wrong but it also changed the rules for better or worse.
     
  23. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    They changed the rules on some judicial nominations. In context, it was actually a pretty small change that doesn't affect the vast majority of votes. The GOP shouldn't make it worse by taking the Democrats' stupidity to a new level.
     
  24. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    You and others can frame it as judicial nominees only but that may not be how it is interpreted by the people who use it again. (right or wrong)
     
  25. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    I have nothing to do with how the rule is framed. I don't have that kind of power. I'm just a guy at a computer in Germany drinking a beer. I'm drinking an Ayinger Jahrhundert Bier if that has any bearing on the issue. It's a very refreshing German lager that goes well with the sunny, early spring-like weather we're getting here.

    Either way, your point is well-taken. A little-known fact is that Reid didn't actually change the rules of procedure in the Senate when the "nuclear option" was invoked. He got a ruling of the chair overturned, which created a new interpretation of the rule. To be frank, I'm not sure what the implications of that are in the current Congress. That may still be up in the air.
     
  26. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    I was using "frame" to mean how you were arguing your point. It is just as valid as the way I was framing it which was more open and less narrow. Obviously the people out of power will narrowly frame while the people in power will want a more open interpretation to allow them more freedom to get what they want done. We on this board are just talking about what we think has happened or will happen anyway.(and without upper security clearances to really have the whole story)
     
  27. Dobeyville

    Dobeyville < 25 Posts

    Ayinger makes a fine beer, I'm partial to their Oktoberfest.
     
  28. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Who is seriously claiming that the Senate rules allow cloture to be invoked with a majority vote as a general matter?
     
  29. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Their Oktoberfest is phenomenal - might be the best I've ever had. Seriously, you can't go wrong with Ayinger. I don't know if you've tried their Lager, Ur-Weisse, Bräu-Weisse, and Celebrator, but they are superb. You can buy them at Spec's. You'll pay a lot more than I pay for them here (about $3.25 per half-liter bottle rather than €.90, which is about $1.03), but they're worth it at least from time to time.
     
  30. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

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