Republicans no longer have any leverage. Their leverage had been “no funding for TSA, Coast Guard, etc., unless you fund ICE and CBP too”. Now that leverage is gone.
More or less, and no the Dems have not given up on those things.
House refuses to support Senate deal and sends back their own:
In a remarkable 24 hours in Washington, House Republicans snubbed a bipartisan funding deal cut by their own Senate GOP counterparts and instead approved an entirely different plan — prolonging the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
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Both chambers of Congress are now out on a two-week recess. In a 213-203 vote, Speaker Mike Johnson and his House Republicans voted Friday night to effectively jam the Senate with their plan, fully funding DHS for eight weeks – including with border and immigration money that the prior deal left out. Three Democrats crossed party lines to vote in favor of the bill. In the meantime, Republicans say the Senate should return from its recess to approve the plan, while President Donald Trump makes his own unilateral attempt to fund TSA without Congress’s help.
It’s a surprisingly aggressive move for the House speaker, who is directly challenging his Senate Republican counterpart, even as he sought to blame Democrats for what he called an “unconscionable” bill. Instead of the House voting on Friday to send a bill to the president’s desk, House GOP lawmakers escalated an intra-Congress feud that scrambles any chance of reopening the department anytime soon. It’s an act of defiance by House GOP leaders, who insist they didn’t agree to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s middle-of-the-night agreement that withheld funding for border patrol or immigration enforcement.
Now of course, I expect the Fox News to spin this continuing TSA issue as mostly Democrats and RINO’s screwing “the people” and with full support for Trump finding some excuse to Pay TSA that’ll arrive in two weeks…
And I feel for the people stuck doing their jobs without pay, or having to quit to pay food on the table. But there’s a warm glow in the cockles of my heart about the infighting and my predictions about how the House being performative politicians without any sense of governing responsibilities being so very correct.
What’s the Dems path to getting anything here? They have no leverage, no cards to play. Their choices are:
- A symbolic victory from a Senate bill with concessions from the Pubs. One that the House will (did) reject.
- Blocking any bill in the Senate so that the Pubs can point and say the Dems aren’t working in good faith.
The Dems position was weak when this thing started, but it’s worse now – dangerously worse.
Now the Administration has deployed its private military to airports thus normalizing them further. Meanwhile Trump will try to pay the TSA via executive order. It doesn’t matter if he can’t find the money or someone files an injunction to stop him; the message is clear “the Pubs tried to pay the TSA”.
It’s good that the Dems try to push back where they can, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the mid terms.
Are you kidding? The entire Senate – all Democrats and Republicans – voted to fund the TSA and the rest of DHS, minus ICE and CBP. The House is blocking it. Democrats aren’t blocking anything. The Democratic position is much, much stronger now than before – now they have the argument “the GOP House is blocking overwhelming, unanimous bipartisan support to fund the TSA”. The GOP has zero leverage anymore to push Democrats to fund ICE and CBP.
Kidding about which part? Whether the Dems position is stronger or weaker?
The Dems did a good job pushing back on additional funding for ICE. The House goes home for a couple of weeks where they can wait and see if Trump is able to sidestep the TSA funding via executive order. If he can’t, they’ll cave and if he can, they’ll hold.
The Dems can get a victory if the House caves, but if they don’t – then what? The Dems don’t have another card to play.
Either way we have ICE in airports unrestricted and a president trying an end run around shutdown funding.
I’m glad the Dems pushed back, but their position isn’t stronger for doing so.
Democrats position is stronger because they got all the Senate Republicans to agree with them. They don’t really have any other power. Now they have the power of a unanimous bipartisan funding bill that the public almost certainly overwhelmingly supports. They have the exact same card they had at the beginning – refusing to vote for future funding of ICE and CBP. They’re still holding that card.
There was literally nothing Dems could do about this. Painting this as dems caving is ridiculous.
Yep. they can maybe stop more ICE and BP funding- which they have done so far- but nothing can be done about the already passed funding. Well, not unless the Dems take Congress this year. Even so, not easy to do.
Yes, that is exactly what I’ve been saying. People keep claiming that Dems got a victory because this limits ICE funding, but ICE already has all the funding they need (for now).
I’m saying they caved on the demands that actually matter.
So because they don’t have a time machine (plus a secret retroactive majority in both houses), they caved? Because that’s the only way they could change the past.
In very simple terms, here’s what happened: After the ICE murders, Democrats said “no more funding for ICE/CBP without serious reforms. We’re willing to fund the rest of DHS right now, but not more money to ICE/CBP without those reforms.” For 2 months Republicans said “no, fund everything or no TSA, Coast Guard, and the rest”. And then Republicans in the Senate just backed down, because of worries about TSA chaos. So Republicans gave into the 2nd part of Democrats’ demand – fund DHS except for ICE/CBP.
How in all fuck is that remotely a cave? The Republicans caved. Democrats lost nothing at all in their negotiating position, and Republicans’ leverage (no funds for TSA/Coast Guard/etc.) disappeared. Democrats original demand – reforms for ICE/CBP – remains, with Dems in a stronger position.
They did not cave on any demands at all.
It is a victory, but limited.
Yeah, I dont see how they “caved”.
I’ve criticized the Democrats’ caving on every shutdown since the administration started. But they played this one as well as they could with the limited hand they had. It’s not over yet, because of Republican infighting… but that just politically helps the Democrats.
OK, that makes much more sense. I’d interpreted it as “no more funding for any of DHS until reforms,” in which case they caved. If the goal was only to withhold funding from ICE and CBP without reforms, then I guess they got what they wanted.
I’d thought the whole point was to cause pain at airports until ICE was reformed. Refusing to fund ICE & CBP until they reform doesn’t hold much leverage when ICE has been fully funded since last summer.
Which doesn’t even get into the meta complaint about the whole situation. Passing a new law to say that ICE has to follow existing laws is an extremely frustrating position to be in. If the Republicans weren’t so wrapped up in not giving an inch, they’d just pass the budget appropriation with all the reforms in place, then let ICE continue to ignore the law and court orders.
Democrats almost never take hostages like that. They were, rightfully, targeting the specific agencies breaking the law, not threatening anything else. Republicans historically are the ones willing to take metaphorical hostages
And then, when they come back for more, if we manage to still keep them from getting any funding, then they have $0. That sounds pretty significant, to me. Sure, it’d be better to kill ICE right now, if you have any ideas for how to do that, but killing them a year from now is pretty good, given all we have to work with.
They probably won’t be at $0 a year from now. They have 4 years to spend the $75 billion, and considering their old budget was $10 billion per year, the OBBB budget could last through the end of Trump’s current term.
Converting warehouses into human warehouses isn’t that cheap, but my understanding is they’re sparing all expenses.
Well, that was in response to your point that they could spend all of that $75 billion right now. If they don’t, then what we’ve accomplished is preventing them from expanding as much as Trump likes, which is also something.
Mike Johnson caved – the House is going to pass the unanimous bipartisan Senate bill, then try to do the rest through reconciliation (which they always could have done).
Well done to the Democrats – winning a small victory with the limited hand they had. But a win is a win.