President Donald Trump is leading the House Republicans into self-destructive actions through “bottomless stupidity,” observed the editor of a major political magazine.
“After weeks of rejecting viable plans to fund the TSA while tabling ICE’s budget, [House Republicans] abruptly reversed course and accepted the basic framework put forward by Democrats. GOP Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and John Kennedy of Louisiana — lawmakers who are pretty much the polar opposite of apostles of bipartisan moderation — sponsored a bill to continue funding the DHS, while arranging to move through the budget line for ICE on a separate reconciliation vote that would no longer have to meet the 60-vote threshold imposed by the filibuster,” wrote The Nation’s Chris Lehmann, a contributing editor, on Monday. “It was a partial capitulation to Democratic demands, sure, but it was also a way out of the GOP’s hilariously extended streak of rake-stepping on the issue. After the proposal won passage with the blessing of Senate majority leader John Thune, the Senate not unreasonably adjourned for two weeks, figuring that at least one major headache for the GOP had been palliated.”
Lehmann then blasted House Republicans for how they reacted to “the next executive branch power grab: Trump abruptly announced that he would bring TSA workers back on payroll, by simply redirecting ICE’s lavish budget line in last year’s tax-and-spending law into the airport-security arm of the DHS. This represented yet another completely illegal executive-branch end run around Congress’s fundamental spending authority — yet with Congress permanently asleep at the wheel, it scarcely seemed to matter.” In response to this, the House Republicans with “bottomless stupidity” tried to claim Trump’s plan had been crafted by a Democrat, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, then attempted to spin his way out of the resulting PR chaos.
“In other words, the House has met a prospective resolution of the DHS shutdown with the very same brand of legislative wishcasting that provoked the funding impasse in the first place,” Lehmann wrote. “Then, naturally, Johnson gaveled his own chamber into a two-week recess of its own.”
He concluded, “It’s hard to imagine how one could draw up a more farcical parody of legislative governance. In a weird aberration, the Senate stumbled into acting as it was originally intended to — brokering a compromise deal on a key budgeting failure that was wreaking havoc with a basic mode of transportation and sparking public outrage. Yet a House that has made it a point of ideological pride to refrain from doing its job in any sphere proceeded to do something worse than nothing — it reinscribed the basic terms of the original failure for no discernible reason other than to dramatize its own contempt for governing.”
Meanwhile, Lehmann pointed out that “the White House’s still greater self-inflicted calamity — the ‘excursion’ into Iran — continues. The Pentagon is reportedly planning to deploy ground troops for an engagement projected to last at least several weeks. This move would represent a dire escalation of an already illegal and unauthorized war. It’s the very sort of executive abuse that Congress is supposed to exercise fundamental oversight over. Yet a national legislature that can’t even govern its way out of airport delays isn’t about to reclaim its constitutional responsibilities in wartime. The scandal here isn’t so much that Congress is on recess at this parlous moment but that, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, it’s no longer possible to tell the difference.”
Johnson has often found himself under fire for his seeming disregard for good faith governance. Earlier this month, Johnson shot down Democrats’ attempt to pass a pared down version of the budget to include pay for ailing TSA agents and public safeguards against ICE agents such as body cameras and oversight. When asked about this at a press conference, he said “Republicans will do the responsible and honorable thing, and Democrats will continue to play politics.”
A reporter then asked, “Mr. Speaker, … the American people are just sick and tired of every one of you, both Republicans and Democrats, coming to this podium and blaming the other side. People have been standing in lines three, four, five hours at a time. There's TSA workers that are selling their plasma. At what point is a leader on either side going to stand up and say, we have a path forward that everyone will agree to? This vote today will extend the shutdown under any circumstance.”
“No, it won't,” Johnson replied. “… Look at the Democrats. They're voting over and over — last night, yesterday afternoon — we gave them a chance to fund Homeland Security. You know how many House Democrats voted? Four of them. They want to use people as pawns. This is not a political blame game. This is one party doing the job and getting the government funded in another. That's using people as pawns.”
Johnson continued, “These people want open borders and they want criminal, illegal aliens in the country. They do not want to enforce the law. They want to defund.”
CNN host Brianna Keilar responded to this by pointing out, "House Speaker Mike Johnson is very clearly in a very tough spot here. You can tell by how he is pretending that Democrats are in control of the Senate and that the Senate bill that he and House Republicans are rejecting was not actually sent over to the House by the Republican-led upper chamber.”
She added, "He said House Republicans are not going to be part of any effort to reopen borders or stop immigration enforcement, he said. They're going to deport illegal aliens. This, we should note, as ICE has actually been sort of redirected to go to some airports.”
