It's Friday, and you know what that means: knocking off early, going to happy hour, and the federal government partially shutting down a major cabinet department because Republicans are mad at Obama and really want to teach him a lesson by shooting themselves in the foot. If Congress doesn't pass some kind of funding bill by midnight, the Department of Homeland Security goes into shutdown mode, meaning that nonessential workers in any number of agencies are furloughed, except that DHS has so many essential agencies that a lot of people in the TSA, Border Patrol, and even the Coast Guard will still be working, just without pay. So at least the TSA people at the airport will have a reason to be extra surly, whee.
Not that the stress is getting to John Boehner or anything. Here's his perfectly reasonable answer to a question about whether the House would take up the "clean" DHS funding bill put forward by the Senate:
No, we don't quite know what that's supposed to mean, either. Reporter asks if Boehner will bring the clean bill to a vote, Boehner makes a kissy face and says, "When we make decisions, we'll let you know," and everyone has a video and .gif to blog about, and no idea what the hell is going to happen. Not that Boehner has any idea what his happy little crew of nation-wreckers is going to decide to do, either. But by god, they're definitely going to send that Tyrant in the White House a message about his unconstitutional immigration action.
The latest "plan," if you can even call it that, is to fund DHS for three more weeks, so we can go through this whole stupid ordeal again next month, maybe when there's a bigger story than our national security in the news, so no one will pay attention and blame Republicans for a shutdown? Even that cunning plan seems iffy: House Democrats issued a terse statement saying that they would not support it, explaining, "If House Republicans want to end up with another manufactured crisis that risks our national security in a matter of days they can do it with 218 votes of their own." And even a brief continuing resolution may not be acceptable to the frothier Republicans:
“If we put a CR resolution, at this point, I'm a strong no against it,” conservative freshman Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told The Hill. “We have planted a credibility flag in the ground and for us to bail right now really hurts us.”
And just think, we're only two months into the Republican majority in Congress. Crom only knows what fantastic amusing videos the next couple of years will generate.
[TPM / The Hill / Cool .gif via New York Magazine]
