Immigration showdown tests Blunt's vow to end dysfunction

WASHINGTON – After the GOP's resounding win in last fall's elections, Sen. Roy Blunt said Republicans needed to restore "regular order" in Congress and prove they could govern effectively.

"We have a chance now to become either a governing majority or a complaining majority," Blunt, R-Mo., told Missouri reporters shortly after the November elections. "I think there will be a significant effort for Republicans to become a party that wants to govern."

This week offered the biggest test of that promise to date, as the GOP struggled to overcome internal divisions over the hot-button issue of immigration.

President Barack Obama set the stage in December, when he issued an executive order shielding an estimated 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. The move outraged Republicans, who fought back by approving only a short-term extension of money for the Department of Homeland Security.

That gave the GOP legislative leverage to revisit the issue this month when the funding would run dry. But as the new deadline hit on Friday, the GOP put itself, and the country, on a fiscal precipice over funding for that agency—with some party members saying homeland security spending is too important to use as leverage on immigration and others saying the move is necessary to counter Obama's executive overreach.

Just two hours before the federal agency — in charge of protecting the nation from terrorism — was slated to partially shut down, Republicans passed a one-week funding bill to buy themselves more time to find out a way out of the impasse.

Blunt, who serves as the No. 5 Senate GOP leader, has taken a hard line in the fight. On Friday, he was one of 31 Senate Republicans who opposed a "clean" funding bill that would keep the Homeland Security Department open through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 without provisions blocking Obama's executive action.

Blunt has said Obama's executive order on immigration is unconstitutional and has urged the GOP to use the threat of a Homeland Security Department shutdown to force Obama to back down. But Senate Democrats repeatedly filibustered legislation linking the two issues.

Blunt's opposition to that plan put him at odds with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other GOP leaders, who pushed to allow the spending bill to move forward — free of immigration provisions — and hold a separate vote on a bill to nullify the executive order. McConnell described that strategy as a way "to get the Senate unstuck."

Blunt downplayed the split and declined to say if he thinks McConnell's strategy was ill-advised.

"I have no evaluation of any of the people that will vote to do this, including Sen. McConnell," Blunt said of the strategy before voting against it on Friday.

But Blunt said it made little sense to approve a clean funding bill that stands no chance of passing the House.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, moved on Friday to approve a three-week stopgap funding bill to keep the Homeland Security agency running on autopilot and buy Republicans more time to fight Obama over his executive immigration order. But that move failed on a 203-224 vote.

Just before 10 p.m., the House passed a 7-day extension of funding, also approved by the Senate. It passed 357-60, temporarily averting a shutdown of the homeland security agency.

Democrats pounced on the disconnect between House and Senate Republicans.

"The Republican Congress has shown that it simply cannot govern," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Two months into the Republican Congress, we are already staring a Homeland Security shutdown square in the face, even as terrorists around the world threaten to strike America."

Next week, Republicans will be back where they started — facing another funding deadline and another internal split over how to confront the president on immigration.

Some moderate Republicans said the party should embrace a recent Texas court decision — the ruling blocks the president's immigration order from taking effect — and move on.

"It's time to declare victory and go home," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. "We ought to be talking about Homeland Security in ways that highlight the president's failures overseas (and not) whether we're going to shut it down."

Blunt made a similar argument in October 2013 when he opposed conservatives' moves to use a government funding bill to attack the Affordable Care Act. That led to a 16-day partial shutdown of the government.

Blunt said at the time that the conservatives' strategy was futile and did more harm to the Republican Party than to the health care reform law.

"There are more effective approaches (to opposing the law) than tying it to a government shutdown," Blunt said at the time. "It's not strategically going to get us where we need to be."

The immigration fight is different, Blunt said this week. For starters, he said, public opinion might favor the GOP, at least more than it did during the 2013 partial government shutdown.

"The fact that this is only about one part of the government and precipitated by the president's action is pretty easily communicated to people," Blunt said.

And while the 2013 shutdown had no impact on implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Blunt argued that Republicans could effectively undermine the president's immigration policy.

"This could work," he said.

But Blunt offered a different answer when asked about the Democratic opposition that will certainly doom any GOP attempt to use Homeland Security spending to undo Obama's executive order.

"You can actually believe you're right without having to win every time," he said.

Contact Deirdre Shesgreen at dshesgreen@usatoday.com or follow me on Twitter @dshesgreen.