Wisely, House Republicans have given up the pointless fight to try to kill the President’s immigration executive actions by linking it to the DHS funding bill. Shutting down the Department of Homeland Security would have been politically disastrous for Republicans. Today, they voted to pass a “clean” DHS funding bill with 182 Democrats and 75 Republicans. Of course, Speaker Boehner chose to have the vote on a day the news media was completely distracted with the speech of the Israeli Prime Minister happening only hours before.
So now the matter is left for the courts and we may have an answer on this in a few days or weeks if the 5th Circuit decides to lift Judge Hanen’s injunction. I’m betting they will.
In the mean time, Republicans in Congress could be working to pass those piecemeal bills they were touting last year. So far, they’re considering lots of enforcement bills and nothing that could be labeled as pro-immigrants. Today, they began markup on four of these pieces of legislation. They’re throwing provisions in the bills that are sure to trigger a veto by President Obama. Hopefully, they’ll start to focus on actually getting legislation passed that may actually become law.