House Voted To Repeal Obamacare | CNN: "Democrats Block Funding For DHS To Protect Obama's Immigration Orders”

Today in Washington, D.C.- Feb 4, 2015:
The House reconvened at 10 AM today. The House has a resolution before it to consider taking up the following bills:
H.R. 527 - "To amend chapter 6 of title 5, United States Code (commonly known as the Regulatory Flexibility Act), to ensure complete analysis of potential impacts on small entities of rules, and for other purposes.
H.R. 50 - "To provide for additional safeguards with respect to imposing Federal mandates, and for other purposes."

Yesterday, the House passed by a partisan vote of 239-186, H.R. 596 - "To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, and for other purposes." Three Republicans voted no with the Democrats. They were Bob Dold (R-IL-10), Bruce Poliquin (R-MD-2) and John Katki (R-NY-24). Rep. Katki said after the vote that he support repeal of Obmacare but made a promise that he would not vote for repeal if a replacement was not presented art the time of the vote for repeal.

The Senate reconvened at 9:30 AM today. At 12:30 PM, the Senate recessed until 2 for a bipartisan luncheon.

Later this afternoon, there could be a re-vote on the failed cloture vote on the DHS appropriations bill. Yesterday, Democrats filibustered the motion to proceed to H.R. 240, the House-passed Homeland Security Appropriations bill, meaning the Senate could not even take up the bill to debate it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted no to preserve his ability to hold the vote again, and has already prepared to force another cloture vote on the bill.

CNN writes, “Every Senate Democrat voted on Tuesday to block Republicans' proposal to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which runs out of money on Feb. 27. They objected to several provisions added to the bill by House Republicans that restrict funding to implement President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration. On a 51 to 48 vote, the Republican majority fell shy of the 60 needed to defeat the Democratic filibuster. Republican leaders vowed to continue debating the bill and to publicly pressure Democrats to okay the $40 billion in funding for the agency.”

Politico adds, “Senate Democrats are falling back in love with the filibuster. After eight years of complaining about obstructionism, the Senate’s new Democratic minority . . . . used the filibuster to stop a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security — and roll back President Barack Obama’s immigration policies — dead in its tracks. . . . This was the first time a Democratic minority had blocked a bill from coming to the floor for debate since Aug. 3, 2006, when Democrats stifled legislation that would have raised the minimum wage and decreased the estate tax. . . .

“Use of the filibuster — which allows individual members to require 60 votes to begin and end debate — is something Democrats often criticized when they were in the majority just two months ago. . . . In fact, the previous Congress’ Democratic Senate majority was incensed by the myriad occasions when Republicans blocked debate from starting on legislation.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admonished Democrats for refusing to even debate this bill. “The legislation Democrats are filibustering would fund the Department of Homeland Security. It would also protect American democracy from kinds of overreach described by President Obama as ‘unwise and unfair.’ That’s it. You’d think a bill like this would pass overwhelmingly. You’d think, at the very least, that Democrats would allow the Senate an opportunity to improve the bill if it needs to be. But Democrats voted to filibuster the bill outright. They prevented the legislation from even being debated. Today’s Democrat Party seems willing to go to any extreme to protect the kind of executive overreach President Obama once described as ‘not how our democracy functions’ – even to block Homeland Security funding to get its way.”

Leader McConnell then reminded that a number of Democrats were quite concerned about the president’s executive actions last fall, yet they all voted against putting a halt to those actions. “The whole situation is a bit perplexing too, given what some of our colleagues said just a few weeks ago; given what they said about overreach President Obama referred to as ‘ignoring the law.’

“One Democrat Senator said that ‘the President shouldn’t make such significant policy changes on his own.’ Another Senator claimed he was ‘concerned about the constitutional separation of powers.’ ‘The Constitution,’ he said, ‘doesn’t say ‘if the Congress fails to act then the president can do x, y and z.’ It just doesn’t…’ And a third Democrat Senator had this to say of the president’s plan for overreach: ‘[it] makes me uncomfortable.’ And yet, all of these Senators voted to shut down debate and block funding for the Homeland Security Department. Every last Democrat voted to filibuster rather than work across the aisle to address the very issue they claimed to be concerned about.”

He concluded, “[T]he Democrats’ Homeland Security filibuster needs to end now. And Democrat Senators who say they’re serious about keeping our nation safe — and addressing what President Obama acknowledged as ‘unwise and unfair’ overreach — need to prove it.”

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