On DHS Funding Bill, Speaker Boehner 'Comes Clean'

     I guess it's up to him to assess if this got him something caving now rather than a week ago. Presumably this was to show the base that he tried and his heart was in the right place though, predictably, many of them aren't mollified anyway. What else is new?

    Anyway, he's done what we all knew he was going to do and had to do.

     "It was all but inevitable, and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) finally cut his losses on Tuesday, telling House Republicans he will allow a vote on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security without any immigration restrictions."

     "The "clean" DHS funding bill could come up as early as Tuesday. It is expected to pass with overwhelming support from Democrats and enough House Republicans."

     "Boehner laid out three paths to his members in a weekly meeting, according to a source in the room: shutting down DHS, another short-term stopgap bill, or the Senate-passed clean DHS bill. He said the first two weren't good options."

     "With more active threats coming into the homeland, I don’t believe that’s an option," Boehner said of a shutdown. "Imagine if, God forbid, another terrorist attack hits the United States."

     "It effectively ends the Republican threat to use a potential shutdown of DHS to overturn President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration, which Boehner promised to fight "tooth and nail" last year with the new GOP majorities in both chambers."

    "Many House conservatives are furious over the immigration actions and intend to defect on the bill. They dealt Boehner a humiliating defeat last Friday by scuttling a three-week extension of the DHS deadline, only to end up with a one-week extension with help from Democrats."

     "Boehner's move to embrace the "clean" DHS bill is a devastating blow to conservatives, who had hoped to use their new majorities to confront Obama by tying their priorities to essential government bills. They feared that caving in the DHS battle would set the tone in Congress for the next two years."

     http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/boehner-caves-dhs-funding

     Maybe, Boehner saved this decision for the day that Bibi spoke in front of Congress. 

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/greg-sargent-israel-netanyahu-could.html

      http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/03/03/390250986/netanyahu-to-outline-iran-threats-in-much-anticipated-speech-to-congress

     As for Bib's speech, it sounds a lot like what he said about Iraq back in 2002. No wonder he gets along so well with the GOP-he's another old dog that can't learn any new tricks no matter how many times the old tricks fail. 

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/john-kerry-on-netanyahu-hes-been-wrong.html

    As usual, things worked the same way here. First McConnell comes up with a solution and the House at first pretends to be unaware of this solution and acts like the Senate Democrats are the problem even though they no longer run the Senate. 

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/memo-to-kevin-mccarthy-gop-has-senat.html

   Finally, he acknowledges reality and does the inevitable. 

    As for conservatives that worry that this means there's going to be all this partisan cooperation need not worry. Boehner came in and made it clear this year he doesn't want any shutdowns or debt defaults. 

   To call that a functional Congress is still pretty thin gruel. Talk about low standards. It's like Krugman says about hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. There's all kinds of bad bills the GOP will push and all kinds of weird digressions.

    "Week one, we had a Speaker election that did not go as well as a lot of us would have liked. Week two, we got into a big fight over deporting children, something that a lot of us didn’t want to have a discussion about. Week three, we are now talking about rape and incest and reportable rapes and incest for minors. … I just can’t wait for week four.”

  

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/03/morning-plum-fight-over-netanyahu-and-iran-could-split-democrats/

      See, there's all kinds of things they can go nuts on other than shutting down the government. They can talk about deporting children and defining rape down. 

      I've said it before and I've said it again: the problem is there aren't more Democrats. We don't have enough Democrats not Democrats who aren't liberal enough. 

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/elizabeth-warren-begs-off-for-netanyahu.html