House GOP leaders pull border bill, delay recess to whip votes

Once again the nominal Speaker of the House, Canadian-born Cuban immigrant Sen. Ted “Calgary” Cruz, and the anti-government insurrectionists of the  Tea Party Caucus in the House have dealt another embarrassing defeat to the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, the weakest speaker in modern American history and the consensus “Worst. Speaker. Ever.” This Fool on the Hill has got to go.

The Hill reports, House pulls border vote:

House GOP leaders pulled a Thursday vote on their $659 million border bill after failing to win over conservative members who opposed giving any more money to President Obama.

A significant number of Republicans had balked at sending any money to the White House for the border, and Democrats were generally united in opposing the measure.

House Republicans will meet at 3 p.m. in the Capitol basement to discuss their options. Members have been advised that another vote series is possible Thursday.

[Update: House Republicans plan to delay their August recess to stay in Washington until they have enough votes to pass a bill responding to the border crisis. House GOP delays recess]

The decision to pull the bill is another defeat for House GOP leaders, who have repeatedly failed to bring their members in line on tough votes.

Even a late decision by leaders to set up a separate vote to prevent President Obama’s Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) program from being expanded didn’t save the funding bill.

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) said the inability of the House to pass a measure would make it hard for members to face their constituents over the five-week August recess.”I’m going to have some splainin’ to do,” Farenthold said.

The DACA program defers the deportations of certain people who came to the United States illegally as children. The House would only have voted on that measure if the funding bill had been approved.

The measure’s defeat means the House will not vote later Thursday on that measure, which was intended to entice conservatives into backing the funding bill.

It is unclear what happens next. The House will vote for the last time around 2 p.m. on the Highway Trust Fund before leaving for the five-week August recess.

After the vote was called off, House GOP leadership tried to pin the blame on Obama.

The grossly incompetent GOP leadership has developed political Tourrette syndrome: they involuntarily vocalize “It’s all Obama’s fault!” in response to their own incompetence and their every failure. They are never accountable for their own actions.

The Senate advanced its measure earlier this week, but it does not appear Democrats have enough votes to win final approval of their border legislation. [Which means that the 10 Tea-Publicans who voted to proceed to debate are “squishes” who will not vote against cloture again to end a GOP filibuster before a final vote.]

That means both chambers are likely to leave Washington having taken no actions to address the border crisis.

That will allow President Obama to bolster his arguments that a dysfunctional Congress is preventing Washington from getting its work done.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted after the vote that by pulling their bill, House Republicans had showed once again why Obama “must act on his own to solve problems.”

What are the consequences of inaction on the border emergency funding bill? “At least two agencies are projected to run out of funding in the next two months. Customs and Border Protection is projected to run out of money in mid-September and Immigration and Customs Enforcement by mid-August.”

How is the conservative media entertainment complex going to spin this epic GOP failure? Greg Sargent reports today that The Weekly Standard’s “Bloody Bill” Kristol, one of the war criminal architects of the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq, is once again giving conservatives their marching orders. House GOP struggles with immigration monster it created:

Bill Kristol, who was admirably honest back in the 1990s, about the GOP motive for killing health reform, comes through again, laying bare what’s really going on here with a piece calling on Republicans to pass nothing today:

If the GOP does nothing, and if Republicans explain that there’s no point acting due to the recalcitrance of the president to deal with the policies that are causing the crisis, the focus will be on the president. Republican incumbents won’t have problematic legislation to defend or questions to answer about what further compromises they’ll make. Republican challengers won’t have to defend or attack GOP legislation. Instead, the focus can be on the president — on his refusal to enforce the immigration law, on the effect of his unwise and arbitrary executive actions in 2012, on his pending rash and illegal further executive acts in 2014, and on his refusal to deal with the real legal and policy problems causing the border crisis. And with nothing passed in either house (assuming Senate Republicans stick together and deny Harry Reid cloture today), immigration won’t dominate August—except as a problem the president is responsible for and refuses seriously to address. Meanwhile, the GOP can go on the offensive on a host of other issues.

The president’s approval rating is slipping to historic lows. Let it continue to slide. Don’t bail him out by jamming though a bill that divides Republicans, will confuse voters, won’t become law anyway, muddies responsibility for the border fiasco, and takes the spotlight off what should be the focus of the August recess — President Obama’s failed policies and Congressional Democrats’ support for them.

The fact that Obama’s approval on immigration has plummeted will no doubt give this idea more appeal among Republicans. But once again, what really matters over the long term is what Latinos think about it — and Republicans will have failed to vote to do anything to legalize the 11 million and refused to respond to the current child migrant crisis.

Latino voters know who hates them with the white hot heat of a thousand burning suns, and that is the nativist and racist GOP. For years we have been promised the “sleeping giant” of Latino voters will go to the polls, and every year they fail to materialize. Well, what the hell are people waiting for? Now is the time to awaken that sleeping giant and to make your voices heard and your votes count. It is time to vote every Tea-Publican out of office in Arizona.