Given recent events this may seem like an inopportune time to defund the Department of Homeland Security, but Speaker of the House John Boehner and other House leaders reiterated their commitment to fighting “executive amnesty” today.
via TPM
“Republicans are in agreement that this is a gravely serious matter,” he told reporters. “The president’s unilateral actions were an affront to the rule of law and our system of government. The American people don’t support it, and as their representatives [we] cannot let it stand.” […]
“I said we’d fight it tooth and nail when we had new majorities in the House and Senate, and I meant it,” Boehner said on Thursday.
We’ve been over this before but, in case you forgot, the GOP’s plan to defund the Department of Homeland Security to stop the president’s action is destined to fail.
The agency responsible for issuing work permits and implementing the president’s executive orders is funded entirely by user fees. It cannot be defunded.
But let’s say for a moment that it could be defunded. Even if that were the case, what’s the end game? What would be their goal? Republicans often say they want stricter enforcement of the law and they’ve even gone as far as to pass bills to deport virtually all DREAMers or other persons who remain in the country under the president’s deferred action program, but defunding the Department of Homeland Security would mean that many laws cannot be enforced and deportations cannot occur.
How exactly would that accomplish their goal? What occurs between collecting underpants and collecting profit?
I imagine both chambers of Congress will eventually pass symbolic gestures opposing the president’s actions while fully funding the department. They don’t have another choice.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security will expire next month because the department was only funded temporarily while the rest of the federal government was funded for the remainder of the fiscal year before the previous session of Congress concluded.