After the House votes on Representative Ted Yoho’s bill to symbolically scold the president for taking executive action on immigration, the House will vote on a bill to fund the government but the Department of Homeland Security will not be included in that bill.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security will be tucked away in a separate bill according to the Washington Post.
The one exception would be the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for the enforcement of immigration laws. DHS would be funded for a shorter period, but that time frame had not been determined as of Tuesday, aides said. The approach was introduced by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the incoming Budget Committee chairman, who is well regarded by fellow conservatives. He and other Republicans believe that the shorter timetable would give GOP lawmakers time to find ways to chip away at Obama’s executive actions.
As I and many others have pointed out several times, there is nothing the House can do to “chip away” at the president’s actions because the agency responsible for implementing them is funded by fees.
But I want to set that fact aside for a moment and recognize that the Republican party, the party that routinely calls for stricter enforcement of immigration laws, is threatening the funding for the agency responsible for enforcement.
Repeat: they’re threatening the funding of the department responsible for enforcing the laws they want enforced.
The Department of Homeland Security itself is an agency that was founded under a Republican administration and any proposal that threatened the funding of the department would have been a great heresy prior to January 2009. Now it’s just business as usual.