GOP Had So Much Fun Playing With National Security Funding, They're Doing It Again This Week!

If you loved last week's edge-of-your-seat excitement about whether the Republican-controlled Congress would do its job and pass a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security, like a bunch of elected legislators whose job is to keep government agencies running, you will love this week's edge-of-your-seat excitement about the exact same thing all over again!

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On Friday night, at the very last possible moment before DHS was forced to tell its non-essential employees to stay home until further notice and to tell its essential employees (which is most of them, because homeland security, duh) to show up at work but without getting paid, the Republican-controlled House finally managed to pass a clean funding bill for one whole week, set to expirethisFriday at midnight, because legislating week by week is exactly what the founders intended.

This, after Speaker John Boehner failed to bully his own party into passing a clean three-week funding extension because they would rather undermine national security and call Barack Obama names than do their jobs. Shockingly, Democrats refused to go along with Boehner's dumb three-week plan -- just like they've refused to go along with all his other dumb plans -- because, as they have been saying all along, we should not play petty politics with stuff like our national security, so you Republicans who are in charge of Congress now need to give us a clean funding bill, sorry if the wingnuts in your caucus don't agree, you guys work that out amongst yourselves, call us when you're ready to be grown-ups.

Then, a few minutes later, Boehner got down on his knees and wept so hard and turned a brighter shade of orange and begged House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to pleasepretty pleasewith a cherry on top save his butt -- again -- since his own Republican caucus is CRAZY, YO!, by supporting his latest desperate attempt to not look like a guy who can't run Congress and doesn't care about national security. He promised that if Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats supported the one-week extension, Boehner would cave like a cheap suit, just like Senate Majority Mitch McConnell finally had to earlier in the week, and allow a clean vote on a longer-term clean funding bill, sans the "We Hate Obama, He Is THE WORST" provision.

Naturally, the speaker's office immediately insisted that "no such deal or promise was made," and then Republican leadership ran around all weekend saying, "Nuh uh, we never said that, we never made a deal, but somehow magically got Democrats to help us out, we're THAT GOOD!"

"There is no such deal and there’s no such bill," [House Majority Whip Steve] Scalise told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace. "On Friday, there was a bill on the House floor to pass a clean funding bill. And we rejected that because we said we’re fighting the president on what he’s doing illegally on immigration."

Because Nancy Pelosi is A Lady, she has yet to say the exact words, "That is bullshit, ACTUALLY, because why else would we have saved Boehner's butt without getting some sort of deal, do we really look that stupid, HUH?" (No. No they do not.)

So this week, we get to have a completely unnecessary manufactured crisis over the fate of our homeland security -- again. Hooray! Democracy in action! Republicans might be a tad more motivated to cave sooner this week, since they've got yet another vacay on the calendar for next week -- hey, didn't they just have a vacation last month? yes they did! -- and they might not want to stick around until late o'clock this Friday night making Important Speeches About Tyrant Obama before they give in and do their damned jobs.

On the other hand, at the end of last Friday night's session, the House "adjourned until Monday NOON for morning debate," because it's not like they have any reason to show up to the office early to, like, get stuff done. They're Congress, after all. And getting stuff done is certainly not their job. At least not before lunchtime.

[ National Journal / TPM ]