Politicians Continue Their Political Theater In Washington

(This cartoon was found on the Facebook page of ARM.)

The Republicans thought they would have it easy after winning control of Congress last November, but it isn't working out that way for them. The GOP-controlled House decided they wanted to force President Obama to rescind his 2012 and 2014 executive orders stopping the deportation of Dreamers and their families, so they tacked those two proposals (poison pills) onto the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

They were convinced that they had the president over a barrel. After all, he wouldn't dare veto the funding bill and shut down the Homeland Security Department, would he? Well, he didn't have to. The Senate Democrats covered his back, and filibustered the funding bill until Senate Republicans agreed to remove the poison pills from the bill. Then they voted to pass the bill.

This left the Congress with two versions of the bill -- the House version with the poison pills and the Senate version without them. Normally, the two houses of Congress would appoint a conference committee to iron out the differences (i.e., come up with a compromise bill acceptable to both the House and Senate). But there wasn't time to do that on Friday, with the funding running out in just a matter of hours.

The House tried to pass a three-week extension of funding, but the Democrats said NO, and enough far-right Republicans joined them to kill that effort (illustrating the fact that Speaker Boehner cannot control his own party). Democrats finally agreed to support a one-week extension, and joining the more moderate Republicans, got the extension passed. The Senate also passed the one-week extension.

That brings us up to this week. Would a conference committee meet and come up with a compromise? NO. Senate Democrats said there was no room for compromise. They would only accept the removal of both poison pills -- so they filibustered the motion to send the Senate bill to a conference committee, and the Republicans were unable to come up with enough votes to stop the filibuster.

Now it's up to the House. It's clear that their bill cannot pass the Senate, so what are they to do? They only have three choices, and none of them are good for Republicans -- keep their bill as it is and shut-down the Homeland Security Department at the end of the week, pass another short continuation of funding, or give in and remove the poison pills from the bill. I expect them to pass another short continuation of funding this week, but in the end they will finally have to give in and pass a "clean" funding bill (a bill without the poison pills).

They will have to do that because they have painted themselves into a corner by underestimating the Senate Democrats. And the public knows it is the Republicans that are primarily responsible for this ridiculous game of political "chicken" -- putting the security of this country at risk.

All in all, it's been a great couple of weeks of political theater on CSPA-1 and CSPAN-2 for us political junkies. Now I need to get the popcorn and liquid refreshments, because this bit of theater has not yet reached the final act.