Media continues the Republican blame game while absolving the Democrats. Now is the time for the Democrats to show the bipartisanship they desperately wanted while in the majority.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Republicans. A month into their control of both chambers of Congress, they are confronting the very real possibility of a shutdown of the Homeland Security Department later this month.
Instead of advancing a conservative agenda and showing voters they can govern, the GOP has been unable to overcome Senate Democrats’ stalling tactics in a dispute over immigration.
“I suppose elections have consequences except in the United States Senate,” complained GOP Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, summing up the frustration for many House Republicans. “Tell me how it would be different if Harry Reid were still running the place,” he added, naming the Senate Democratic leader who was booted into the minority in November’s midterm elections.
Although their party is now setting the floor schedule and calling hearings, Republicans are finding to their chagrin that important things haven’t changed from when they were in the Senate minority.
Republicans are six votes short of the 60 needed to advance most legislation, and Senate rules grant numerous rights to the minority party. That means if Democrats remain united, they have the ability to block GOP bills just as they did while in the majority.[…]
“Look at the last shutdown — 85 to 90 percent of the personnel from DHS all came to work and they all got paid” eventually, said Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz. “As much as both sides don’t want that to happen it is always a possibility.”
Another lesson from the last shutdown, which happened in the fall of 2013 in a failed attempt to unwind Obama’s health care law: Republicans get blamed. Even while insisting Senate Democrats are the ones courting a shutdown, many Republicans acknowledge they may have a hard time selling that idea to the public given that they control both chambers of Congress.
The predicament is so frustrating to House Republicans that some conservatives have begun advocating changing Senate rules to limit the use of the filibuster, an idea several Senate Republicans have already dismissed. For many, the fear is that their deadlock over the Homeland Security bill is merely a taste of things to come for the next two years.