We all knew that a fight was coming when the question of funding the Department of Homeland Security came up. The President wants to use that agency for his executive amnesty orders and the majority of the elected legislative representatives of the people did not want such actions to be funded. And not to toot my own horn here, but I made a prediction back on February 4th that the House leadership was going to need to point out some obvious, if painful facts if they hoped to combat the media spin on this. The President’s allies would claim that the GOP was “shutting down DHS” even though the facts were clearly the opposite, and they would hold forth the sad prospect of TSA, border patrol and Coast Guard personnel going without paychecks as the reason. The proper response, I reasoned, was to say the following:

Wages for border patrol and customs agents? Paid for. Wages for immigration officers and Coast Guard employees? Got it covered. TSA screeners? There may be a lot of gritting of teeth over that one, but it’s paid for as well. It’s all there, President Obama, with the money ready to flow and the paychecks waiting to be covered. All it requires is your party to put it through to your desk and for you to sign it.

I’ll confess that I don’t always have the utmost faith in the party leadership when it comes time to hit the sideline pass on fourth down, but it did my old heart good to see John Boehner come out today and answer the question correctly.

Speaker John Boehner says the House has done its job in passing a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and it’s Senate Democrats’ fault if the department runs out of money at the end of the month. And, he makes clear, he’s prepared to let that happen. If funding runs out, the Ohio Republican said, “Well, then, Senate Democrats should be to blame. Very simple.” “The House has acted. We’ve done our job. Senate Democrats are the ones putting us in this precarious position, and it’s up to Senate Democrats to get their act together,” Boehner told Chris Wallace in an interview aired on “Fox News Sunday.”

The kicker comes at the end of the interview.

“The Senate Democrats are blocking the ability to even debate the bill,” he said. “It’s their turn, that’s the way the system works. That’s the way the Constitution spells it out.”

This is what we need for the next two years and far more of it. The Democrats wanted to play this game the entire time they controlled the Senate, pinning the blame anywhere they could except on themselves. Now the shoe is on the other foot and the GOP can not allow them to simply change the rules yet again. The media will play along (and I’ve been seeing it all weekend on cable news) in an effort to pretend that the last six years never happened, but this set of lies is too obvious for even the most obtuse, low information voter to ignore.

The DHS funding is in place. All bills which spend such funds must originate in the House as per the Constitution. The House has acted and all of these line items under discussion are paid for except for the brand new bits which cover actions which the President repeatedly said were beyond his own authority to enact. The rest is paid for. If the Democrats don’t want to authorize paying all of the bills for DHS, go explain that to the folks who will stop getting paid.

The GOP did their job. The ball is in your court, Democrats. Game on.