When Republicans held only the House of Representatives, their efforts at lawmaking always died in the Democratic Senate.
They thought everything would change if they could win the Senate, allowing them to pass legislation through Congress and send it on to President Barack Obama.
Then reality happened.
They won the Senate. But the inability of the Senate to move a GOP-backed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security and also reverse some of Obama’s executive actions on immigration illustrates that, despite a change in leadership, getting contentious legislation through both chambers of Congress remains a challenge, and holding the majority doesn’t guarantee a smooth glide path for Republican priorities.
That became clear Tuesday when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stymied by a Democratic filibuster, admitted that he doesn’t have the votes to bring the Homeland Security bill up for debate.
“It’s clear we can’t get on the bill,” McConnell told reporters. “And I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re stuck because of Democratic obstruction on the Senate side. I think it’s clear we can’t go forward in the Senate, unless you’ve all heard something I haven’t. . . . And the next step is obviously up to the House.”
The protracted battle over the measure, which the House passed last month, is producing friction between House and Senate Republicans and causing concern among some outside conservative groups, which had expectations of the new majority on Capitol Hill muscling through legislation. Instead, Republicans and their outside supporters have encountered the reality that the magic number in the Senate is still 60.
“House Republicans had a wildly unrealistic concept of what Senate Republicans could do,” said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow specializing in Congress at the Brookings Institution. “The 60-vote super majority requirement means that Senate Democrats are doing the same thing that Republicans did when they were in the minority – nothing happens.”
With the DHS set to run of money on Feb. 27, congressional Democrats have been defiant in their call for a “clean” funding bill that excludes Republican amendments on Obama’s immigration actions.
McConnell and Senate Republican leaders have been searching for a strategy to avert a potential partial Homeland Security shutdown. Meanwhile, some House Republicans are watching the events unfold in the Senate and fuming.
“Maybe I need to go over and give a closing argument from the floor of the Senate. I’m sure I could convince and guilt some people into voting to defend the Constitution,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, one of the House’s most vocal critics of Obama’s immigration policies. “I think that if I help push the (Senate) Democrats, it will help (McConnell). Maybe he’ll push a little harder.”
“As House Republicans, we did our job,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., told the conservative Breitbart News website.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who has tried to present a united front in the new Congress with McConnell, also indicated that the Homeland Security ball was in the Senate majority leader’s court.
“I’m not going to suggest what the Senate should or shouldn’t do,” Boehner told reporters last week. “All I’ll say is this: The House did its work. We won this fight. Now it’s time for Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats to come together and hold the president accountable.”
Senate Republicans are venting, too, mainly about Democratic obstruction via the filibuster.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, no stranger to filibusters in the last Congress, on Tuesday blasted Reid and Senate Democrats for their actions.
“Just today, Democrat after Democrat were giving speeches on how important it is to fund the Department of Homeland Security, apparently with no sense of irony because they give these speeches while they’re filibustering taking up that funding,” Cruz said. “It is Harry Reid and the Democrats, with President Obama’s encouragement, who are filibustering and trying to block the Senate from considering funding for DHS at a time of escalating risks worldwide. That is reckless and irresponsible and the Democrats should stop filibustering.”
Some of the Senate’s harshest critics in the House say that McConnell is doing his best on the Homeland Security measure, recognizing the more deliberative nature of the upper chamber and the realities of holding a narrow majority. The Senate has 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.
Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., laid most of the blame for the DHS stalemate on Obama and noted that McConnell “appears to be trying to be vigilant in moving our position forward.”
“I think he’s trying to do whatever he can to deal with the rules of the Senate and the hand that he’s dealt,” Salmon said. “As long as they have that 60 issue, it’s a difficult bridge to cross, but I’m confident that they’ll figure that out.”
Some outside conservative groups and political observers don’t share Salmon’s confidence.
Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general and president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee, railed against McConnell’s handling of the DHS bill.
“Leader McConnell may hold several votes on the bill, but he won’t actually do what it takes to pass it,” Cuccinelli wrote on his group’s website. “He won’t passionately make the moral argument for stopping amnesty. He won’t force the Democrats to do a talking filibuster or cancel the upcoming recess to expose their obstruction.”
With the clock ticking and DHS funding unresolved, Boehner, who’s taken his share of blows from conservatives, empathizes with McConnell.
“He’s got a tough job over there, I’ve got a tough job over here,” Boehner said last week. “God bless him and good luck.”