Your move, Speaker Boehner.

After Senate Democrats again blocked a House proposal aimed at undoing President Barack Obama’s unilateral initiatives to stave off deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has few options to stave off a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security at midnight Friday. He can allow a vote on the Senate’s “clean” bill that’s free of immigration provisions — again angering the right-wing rebels in his conference — or perhaps try another punt, which Democrats would likely oppose.


Senate Democrats sent a blunt message to the speaker by rejecting the House GOP’s request to go to conference to resolve differences between their two approaches: enough’s enough, time to pass a bill to keep DHS funded through September and move on. The procedural vote was 47-43, short of the 60 votes the conference request needed to advance.

“Are they going to prioritize politics or are they going to prioritize national security?” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said of Republicans.

Senate Republicans, tiring of the prolonged conflict, are preparing to move on to other issues after passing their own funding bill last week.

“This sends it back over to the House and it’s in their court. They could change it and send it back to us. But we’ve sort of seen what the prospects would be,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said in an interview.

But House Republican leaders don’t expect to show their hand until midweek, potentially setting up another frantic 11th-hour scramble to avoid a shutdown late this week. With a Friday deadline looming, Republican leaders met Monday afternoon to begin to plot their way out of one of the hardest predicaments of Boehner’s speakership.

Just hours after the leadership meeting, another emerging power center — the House Freedom Caucus, led by Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan — gathered Monday night to plan its next moves. Sources in the newly formed group say its members aren’t moving to oust Boehner, but some conservatives would support removing the speaker if it came up.

As those factions huddled separately, the clash between conservative and centrist Republicans on DHS was set to hit the airwaves. The American Action Network, which is aligned with House leadership, prepared to air ads prodding Jordan and other House conservatives to fund DHS. House conservatives knocked down a three-week stopgap proposed by Boehner last week, expanding the rift between the GOP’s rival factions.

House Democrats, who provided the votes to help Boehner skirt a shutdown of the anti-terrorism agency, say they expect a floor vote on a long-term DHS funding bill this week. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said such a measure “is the only way to avert the second manufactured crisis Republicans have created in just the last two weeks.”

And House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), speaking to reporters Monday morning, said he would not comment on whether Boehner promised a so-called clean funding bill. But Hoyer added, “Why do you think that Democrats voted for a one-week [bill]?” after opposing Boehner’s three-week proposal. “Try to analyze that.”

Democratic lawmakers and aides say privately that Boehner did make such an agreement. Boehner’s office denies any formal deal.

But in light of those whispers and the possibility that Boehner may bend to a Senate bill passed with far more support from Democrats than Republicans, Democrats continued playing tactical hardball with the GOP by stiff-arming the conference attempt. The statistics are beginning to pile up: In addition to rejecting the conference, Senate Democrats four times blocked the House-passed DHS bill with its immigration provisions, and torpedoed a more narrowly tailored bill by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to challenge Obama’s immigration policies.

The Democratic strategy is threatening to turn the Senate into a repeat of the past few years when Republicans were in the minority: Routine rejection of bills from even being debated on the Senate floor.

“Some of the folks who are now filibustering simply for the sake of delaying and causing gridlock are the same folks who used to denounce the filibuster,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “It’s interesting to see that they weren’t serious.”

Given Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s past pleas to go to conference with the House on legislation, McConnell said Democrats’ tactic to filibuster the conference “just doesn’t make any sense.” But Senate Democrats say there’s no room to negotiate between their chamber’s clean bill that funds DHS through September and the House’s bill.

“This push by House Republicans to go to conference is the very definition of an exercise in futility. I’ve been very clear for days now that we will not go to conference,” Reid said Monday. “We will not be a party to yet another charade by House Republicans because it would inevitably shut down the Department of Homeland Security.”

There’s more at stake than DHS funding in this fight, though: The future of Republican leadership could well be shaped by what happens on the floor this week.

The battle over immigration policy — Republicans have tried to use DHS funding as leverage to stop Obama’s immigration directives — has turned into one of the defining struggles of the 65-year-old Boehner’s speakership. People close to Boehner are beginning to wonder whether he will survive, although the Ohio Republican — like he always does — downplays such speculation.

Boehner’s top lieutenants are also under the gun. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hasn’t delivered on his promise to end crisis-fueled legislating. And House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was chosen for the post for his ability to corral conservatives, suffered a stunning defeat as well, losing more than 50 GOP votes on the floor in what was one of the most embarrassing losses of the Republican majority.

Asked what Boehner can do to govern more effectively, Hoyer said he should ditch his conservatives.

“Work with us,” Hoyer said. “We have 188 members. I think Boehner is a constructive pragmatic person. He’s shown that.”