By Glynn Cosker
Editor, In Homeland Security
House Speaker John Boehner told Senate Democrats Wednesday to “get off their [expletive]” and help pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) while limiting President Barack Obama’s executive actions related to immigration.
“The House has done its job, why don’t you go ask the Senate Democrats when they’re going to get off their [expletive] and do something other than to vote no?” said Boehner after meeting with Republican Party lawmakers. “The issue here is not Senate Republicans. The issue here is Senate Democrats.”
Funding for the DHS is set to expire Feb. 27, and a stopgap measure is required to avoid a shutdown of the cabinet-level department.
Boehner’s profane take on the situation followed comments Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who declared the Senate “stuck” on the issue with the next move solely in the House’s court.
Boehner dismissed McConnell’s analysis, insisting instead that the House has already completed its work on Homeland Security and immigration. He said Senate Democrats were remiss in not backing a House-passed bill that would fund the DHS through this budget year while also negating President Obamas executive orders which will allow millions of undocumented aliens to legally remain in the United States.
In response to Boehner’s comments Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s spokesman Adam Jentleson stated that Boehner’s “cursing is not going to resolve the squabbling among Republicans that led to this impasse. Democrats have been clear from day one about the way out of this mess: take up the clean Homeland Security funding bill which Republicans signed off on in December — and which is ready to come to the Senate floor — pass it, and move on.”
With the Feb. 27 deadline on the horizon, a compromise is unlikely to emerge as a viable option since Republicans on Capitol Hill are adhering to Boehner’s rhetoric and have no intentions of further action on DHS funding. DHS leaders warn that a short-term stopgap solution is not suitable given that major changes are earmarked for the Secret Service—an agency in great need of overhaul in light of numerous embarrassing gaffes in 2014.
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