Republicans failed in their latest attempt to wield the threat of a partial government shutdown as a weapon of protest against Barack Obama’s immigration policies on Monday, with Democrats and the White House increasingly confident they have the upper-hand in the showdown.

In the Senate, Democrats blocked an attempt by Republicans to force negotiations between both sides of the legislature over a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The failed vote immediately put pressure on the Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, who is stuck between the mutinous conservative fringe of his own party and the need to fund the DHS, a critical government agency that runs out of money at the end of this week.

Both parties are blaming each other for the impasse. But the gridlock is most damaging to Republicans who, four months after electoral gains that gave them control over both chambers of the legislature, have allowed bitter internal divisions to impede effective government.

Boehner’s inability to rally the support of his own caucus last week led the humiliation of a short-term fix, aided by Democrats at the eleventh hour, which only kept the government agency funded for a week.

Republicans had hoped to use a Senate motion to force inter-chamber negotiations over DHS funding, but needed to secure at least 60 votes for the procedure to succeed. The measure secured 47 votes, with 43 opposed – well short of the threshold required.



The outcome had been widely expected; minority leader Harry Reid had already signalled Democrats would vote against the measure, describing it as “the very definition of an exercise in futility”. “We will not be party to another charade by House Republicans,” he said.

The failed vote left Boehner, who has repeatedly kicked the immigration can down the road, running out of options.

Privately, operatives from both parties believe a “clean” DHS funding bill passed by the Senate – which leaves Obama’s immigration provisions untouched and keeps the DHS funded until September – would pass if put to a vote in the House.

However recalcitrant conservatives in the lower chamber are promising a revolt against Boehner if any such legislation reaches the floor of the House. They are determined to make funding for the DHS contingent upon provisions that would effectively nullify executive orders signed by Obama that shield millions of undocumented migrants from the threat of deportation.

Democrats are increasingly confident Boehner will have no option but to relent, allowing the Senate’s bipartisan bill to be put to a vote.

The speaker is widely rumoured to have struck a deal with House Democrats on Friday, promising that the clean bill would be provided floor time in exchange for Friday’s short-term fix, which avoided the partial government shutdown that would have been a public relations disaster for the GOP.

Republicans leaders are publicly denying any such deal was made. However Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking House Democrat, who was involved in Friday’s last-minute negotiations, made clear at a press conference earlier on Monday that he expected the Senate’s bill to be put to a vote. “I would hope and expect that we will have a vote,” this week, he said.

The White House also appears to be in a confident mood. “The president certainly was disappointed to have to sign that one week extension,” said Obama’s press secretary Josh Earnest. “The fact that the president had to sign a seven-day funding bill does represent an abject failure of the leadership of the House.”

There is speculation that Boehner plans to rely on obscure procedural rules to limit the embarrassment of an expected climbdown, effectively standing by while Democrats exploit a rarely-used procedure to force the vote without the speaker’s explicit consent.

But regardless of how Boehner packages it, a House vote on a standalone funding bill that would keep the DHS funded for six months and – and leave Obama’s immigration plans unscathed – would represent yet another strategic defeat for the conservative flank of the GOP.

Weeks of bitter confrontations with Democrats and moderate Republicans will have yielded no discernible gains for conservatives – except, perhaps, for the display of power that have proven they can still exert over the embattled speaker of the House.