There will be much more material today, but it won't be up until sometime this afternoon, PT. Thanks for being patient—the weekend posts will eventually be back to 100% normal, we promise!

A Day of Dueling DHS Bills

The members of the U.S. Senate have a 2-week break that begins today, and they don't want to waste any of it. So yesterday, the Senate Republican conference bowed to reality, and accepted that ICE is not going to be funded in its current form on the strength of Democratic votes. Consequently, the GOP senators took the deal the Democrats have been offering for weeks, and the upper chamber voted unanimously to fund the parts of DHS that are shut down, except for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Patrol. The Republicans' thinking is clear: "We'll come back in a couple of weeks, and maybe work something out with the Democrats, or maybe try to do ICE through reconciliation."

Once the bill reached the House, well, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) did nothing to dispel the notion that he is not a serious political operator, and he is not actually a leader. He declared the bill dead on arrival, and while he specifically said he does not blame Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Johnson opined that the Senate-passed bill is a "joke" and that he had a hard time believing that most Senate Republicans actually read it.

Johnson tried very hard to pin 100% of the blame on Senate Democrats, but... he wasn't especially successful. While spinning the Senate bill as some sort of trick that the Democratic caucus managed to foist on the Republicans, the fact is that Thune played a key role in writing the bill and shepherding it through the Senate, and the other Republican members most certainly did read it (or, at very least, knew what the bill said). So, the Speaker has just insulted his colleagues on the other side of the Capitol, and in service of... nothing useful.

Further, you would think that anyone who reached such a high position in government as Johnson has would have learned, at some point, that politics is the art of the possible. It is all good and well that Johnson has Freedom Caucusers barking in his ear about those evil brown-skinned immigrants, but the fact is that the Senate gets a say in legislation and, given that Senate Republicans are clearly not willing to kill the filibuster, that means Democrats get a say. Johnson could therefore begin his process by talking to, say, the 15 most Blue Dog Democrats, to see what they might agree to. Or he could work with House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to try to hammer out a compromise. If a bill can get 15-20 Democratic votes (or more) in the House, it can probably get 7-8 Democratic votes in the Senate. If a bill can only get one or two or three Democratic votes in the House, it can't possibly get 7-8 Democratic votes in the Senate, and so it's dead on arrival.

Instead of changing tacks, Johnson doubled down on the House Republican Christmas list. After tossing the Senate bill in the trash, he rushed through a kick-the-can bill that would fund DHS, including ICE, at current levels for another 8 weeks. It passed on the strength of Republican votes, plus three Democrats crossing the aisle—Reps. Henry Cuellar (TX), Don Davis (NC) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA). Even Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), who has a more conservative voting record than any current Democratic senator, didn't vote for it.

In short, the new House DHS bill is effectively the same as the hold House DHS bill, and has just as much hope of passing the Senate as the other ones. Actually, it has less hope because the members of the Senate have already left town. Thune can call them back into session, if he chooses, but he's not going to, just to vote on a bill that cannot pass. Meanwhile, the members of the House headed for the doors as soon as the kick-the-can bill was passed, and they're back home now for 2 weeks, as well.

That means that barring some sort of miracle, the DHS shutdown will continue for at least 14 more days. Today is Day 43, which means it has already tied the record for longest government shutdown in American history (though the other 43-day shutdown, which was last year, involved the whole government as opposed to one agency). Many Senate Republicans are grumbling, because they think Johnson's outright rejection of a bill that passed the Senate unanimously will cause Republicans to get the blame for the shutdown, and the long lines at airports. Alternatively, it is possible that voters will notice that this Republican-controlled White House and this Republican-controlled Congress have been in power for both of the longest shutdowns in U.S. history (and this White House was also in power for #3 on the list). So, the Republicans could end up with the blame through that line of thinking, as well.

In any case, it looks to us like the Democrats are winning here, while pressure on the Republicans is growing. We will see if that manifests in a compromise DHS bill, a desperate reconciliation bill, or some other outcome. (Z)

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