CONGRESS: The president must listen to the will of the voters!
PRESIDENT: Okay, what is that?
CONGRESS: Well, [spills coffee on crotch]
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) February 28, 2015
Several members of the Freedom Caucus are on the House floor preventing a bill from passing by unanimous consent
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) February 28, 2015
ISIS comes, kills us all in our beds? MT @ezraklein: Here's what happens if DHS actually shuts down: http://t.co/7xDHSifMlv
— Billmon (@billmon1) February 28, 2015
House Republicans have the biggest GOP majority since before the New Deal. But they can't pass a 3-week punt without Nancy Pelosi.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) February 27, 2015
Or even one week, as it turns out. From Roll Call, news of the fking Mole People:
Just two hours before the Department of Homeland Security was set to run out of funding, the House delivered a bill to float the agency for one more week.
But last-minute maneuvering almost put a snag in that plan.
Shortly after learning that GOP leaders intended to bring the stopgap measure to the floor after Senate passage earlier in the evening, a band of conservatives huddled in the chamber to plot their next move.
Earlier in the day, 50 of them helped sink the House’s proposed three-week continuing resolution because it did not include language blocking President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
At around 9:30 p.m., close to 20 members who hailed largely from the newly formed House Freedom Caucus appeared to be consulting the House rules on a laptop belonging to Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.
Republican votes were critical to passing this one-week patch, especially since leadership chose to expedite consideration of the measure by bringing it up under “suspension of the rules.”
Typically reserved for noncontroversial measures, bringing a bill up under suspension requires a minimum of two-thirds of those present and voting to vote in the affirmative.
That meant leaders were relying on a lot of Republicans to vote “yes” — and a lot of Democrats, too. Members of the minority party earlier in the day held out all but 12 of their votes over the GOP’s refusal to bring up the other bill passed by the Senate on Friday morning, to fund the DHS for the remainder of the fiscal year without conditions.
Luckily for Republicans, Democrats agreed to help out with the seven-day stopgap. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to her members asking them to support the latest effort, saying that it would ensure passage of the longer-term DHS funding bill in the next seven days…
Cherry on the shite sundae:
… A senior House Democratic aide clarified to CQ Roll Call that Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, gave Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders his commitment to bringing up the six-month bill next week, once the Senate inevitably blocks the House’s motion to form a conference committee to resolve differences between the two chambers.
Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman, denied that such a conversation had taken place: “There was no such promise made,” he said…
So we all get to do this again next week. Cheers!
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) February 28, 2015
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Speaking of whiny clowns, before anyone complains about too many tweets, I’ve been fighting a nasty cold & the spindizzies (labyrinthitis) all week. One hundred forty characters is about as much attention as I can muster, right now.