The day before President Barack Obama announced in November that he’d grant temporary legal status to millions of immigrants who live in the United States without documentation, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt took to the Senate floor to slam the expected move as dangerous and unconstitutional.
Since then, the Republican lawmaker has taken on a leading role in the fight against what he describes as Obama’s “lawless immigration power grab.”
Blunt co-sponsored legislation that would block funding for the Department of Homeland Security to implement the president’s new program and would prohibit immigrants who qualify from working. Another bill he’s proposed would authorize Congress to bring a legal case against Obama if the president fails to uphold the law as written.
Blunt also voted for a constitutional point of order to protest Obama’s executive action on immigration and joined an amicus brief by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in support of a lawsuit seeking to undo the president’s work.
On Tuesday, a federal judge considering the lawsuit in Texas issued a preliminary injunction, effectively halting the processing of immigrants’ applications. Blunt cheered the ruling. “The president cannot continue to blatantly ignore the nation’s laws and the Constitution,” he said in a statement.
Blunt and other members of the Republican leadership in Congress could end up bearing the brunt of the blame if a standoff with Democrats over the issue leads to a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security next week. The department’s funding is set to expire Feb. 27 unless Congress acts.
But for Blunt, the benefits of taking a high-profile stand in the immigration battle likely outweigh the risks, allowing him to burnish his conservative credentials ahead of his bid for re-election next year.
Blunt has a 52 percent approval rating among likely Republican primary voters in his state, according to a recent poll by the Missouri Alliance for Freedom, a conservative advocacy group. An aggressive stance against the president could boost those numbers.
Republicans in the Senate have tried and failed three times to debate and vote on a Homeland Security funding bill passed by the House of Representatives. Senate Democrats are stalling the bill using a parliamentary tactic known as a filibuster. They object to the provisions that would reverse the president’s executive actions on immigration.
A CNN poll found that most Americans – 53 percent – would blame Republicans for a Homeland Security shutdown. Thirty percent would blame Obama.
“The reality of the situation matters less than the perception of the situation,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter analyzing state and national politics.
“I think Republican actions in the past have primed voters to blame them,” Gonzales said, citing the GOP’s role in the last shutdown of the federal government, in 2013.
Six Senate Democrats would have to join with Republicans to overcome the 60-vote threshold required to bring the House bill to a vote in the Senate.
That looks unlikely, given that all the Democrats in the Senate have signed a letter saying they’ll vote only for a “clean” DHS funding bill, without the controversial language on immigration.
With time running out, Blunt and other Republicans hope to persuade half a dozen Democrats to break with their party.
“If there are things that our friends on the other side don’t like in the House bill that was sent over, well, let’s hear what they are and let’s vote on those things and see what happens then, but we need to continue our efforts and move on this funding bill,” Blunt said in another floor speech last week. He also held a news conference calling on Senate Democrats to allow a vote on the House bill.
Among those under the most pressure to cave is Blunt’s fellow Missouri senator, Democrat Claire McCaskill.
Republican members of Missouri’s delegation in the House sent McCaskill a letter Tuesday, reminding her that she and other moderate Democrats had made public statements suggesting they opposed the president’s actions on immigration.
“We recognize you may have disagreements with the House-passed bill; however, as elected representatives we believe those differences should be resolved through the democratic process,” said the letter, which was signed by Reps. Ann Wagner, Sam Graves, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer and Jason Smith.
“The House has done its work; it’s time to stop playing politics and time to place the people’s priorities first,” Wagner said in a statement. “Missourians want to see a healthy debate and they want us to govern.”
A spokesman for McCaskill said the representatives who’d written the letter were right that McCaskill had reservations about Obama’s actions on immigration. But he said the letter-writers had conveniently left out the rest of McCaskill’s quote, in which she pointed out that Republicans in the House had refused for a year and half to even consider a comprehensive immigration bill that passed with bipartisan approval in the Senate.
“Republican leadership sets the agenda for Congress,” said the spokesman, John LaBombard. “So the question they have to answer is this: Why not just fund our Homeland Security with a clean bill, free of policy riders, and then finally set up a real debate on immigration?”
Republicans have to be mindful of being portrayed as a party that simply objects to everything, but the GOP would have to take significant damage to seriously endanger Blunt’s chances of getting re-elected, Gonzales said.
“There are other senators in more competitive and Democratic states that are more at risk with a Republican brand problem than Sen. Blunt,” he said.