海角大神

Yesterday House Republicans launched their opening move in their war against the president鈥檚 announcement of deferred action on deportation of illegal immigrants with the听passage of a bill that purports to revoke the changes to the law that the president made via executive action:听

As the article goes on to note, this is only the beginning of the battle over the president鈥檚 immigration policy that will play out over the coming weeks. In addition to possible additional measures in the House, the bill that passed yesterday must now go on to the Senate. The first question there will be whether the bill goes through the committee process or heads straight to the Senate floor for consideration by the full Senate. The recent promises of incoming GOP leadership to rely more often on 鈥渞egular order鈥� would suggest that the proper procedure would be to send the bill through the committee process, but going that way on this bill is complicated by the fact that this bill must be passed by the end of February in order for the Department of Homeland Security to continue to be funded. Pushing the bill through committee could potentially slow it down so much that there would be little room for error before spending authority runs out, and also raises the threat that proceeding in this manner would weight the bill down with amendments that would make reconciliation with the House version of the bill, or even passage in the Senate, unlikely. So, expect this bill to go directly to the floor, but that鈥檚 where the real problems start for the GOP.

As most observers expected, Republicans did not use their new-found control of the Senate to make any further changes to the filibuster rules. This means that they will need to pick up 60 votes in order to pass the House bill, with any modifications that may be made on the Senate floor, which means finding at least five Democrats willing to support a bill that curtails the president鈥檚 immigration policy. At first glance, that seems quite unlikely, so the most likely outcome right now is that this current bill dies in the Senate, probably sometime in late January, if not earlier. Even if the bill passed the Senate, though, the bill would most assuredly be vetoed by President Obama, and it is exceedingly clear that there aren鈥檛 enough votes in either chamber of Congress to overturn an expected veto. In the House, there were 26 Republicans who voted against the measure, but even if every Republican voted to override the veto, the GOP would still be some 44 votes short of a veto override. In the Senate, they鈥檇 need to convince 12 Democrats to override the president鈥檚 veto. So even if the bill passed the Senate somehow, it would still die, and the ball would be back in the GOP鈥檚 court.

At that point, the GOP would have to decide whether it wants to push the matter of opposition to the president鈥檚 immigration actions further by continuing to refuse to pass a 鈥渃lean鈥� funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, in which case that department will be forced to rely solely on emergency funds after the end of February, or they will reluctantly concede that the defunding option has failed. It would, in other words, be the government shutdown debate all over again, except that it would be focused solely on one part of the government. The problem that the GOP faces is that the department in question also happens to be the one primarily responsible for everything from the nation鈥檚 response to terrorist threats and natural disasters to presidential security, the processing of immigration applications for legal immigrants, and the border patrol. Will Republicans really be willing to put all of this at risk over their dispute with the president?

Jennifer Rubin听finds it unlikely that they would:

听

As I noted when I wrote about this last week, I tend to agree that this is how things are likely to turn out,听especially in light of the Paris terror attacks听and continued reports about other ongoing threats of attacks in Europe, Australia, and the United States. As with past government shutdowns, Republicans apparently think that they will be able to pin responsibility for a shutdown on the president and Democrats, but as we saw in October, it鈥檚 typically the party that鈥檚 seen as unwilling to compromise that gets the blame, and, in this case, that鈥檚 likely to be the GOP, especially since polling indicates that, at least on substance, the public tends to support the president on immigration rather than the Republican Party. The overriding issue, though, is that it is difficult to me to see how the GOP can positively spin the idea that it is holding up funding for a wide variety of security-related funding over what likely seems to many like a fairly minor dispute over immigration policy between the executive and legislative branches. Indeed, I鈥檇 hazard a guess that most Americans are going to think it's more important that the agency primarily responsible for detecting and deterring terrorist attacks be fully funded, as will a significant number of Republicans in both chambers of Congress. Given this, my guess is that, in the end, the GOP will back down, pass a 鈥渃lean鈥� bill to fund DHS, and be forced to look for another avenue to challenge the president鈥檚 immigration actions. This isn鈥檛 going to make the tea party happy, of course, but it seems fairly clear that they are going to have to learn fairly quickly that even having a majority in Congress doesn鈥檛 mean the GOP is going to get everything it wants.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.