DHS Spending Bill and Threat of Shutdown Just a Ruse to Remove Executive Amnesty Issue from Bill

Republican-controlled Congress sent legislation to President Barack Obama on March 2, 2015 that funds the Department of Homeland Security without any of the immigration-related concessions they demanded for months. The House voted 257-167 in favor of the $40 billion spending bill, which Obama was expected to sign promptly. All 182 Democrats present voted for the bill, while it received only 75 Republican “yes” votes. It was a major victory for Obama and the Democrats, and a wholesale retreat for Republicans, who have spent months railing against an “unconstitutional overreach” by Obama in extending deportation stays and work permits to millions of immigrants in this country illegally. [Source]

Despite fiery CPAC speech, is Ted Cruz changing course?

The Texas Republican dazzled conservative supporters at a conference outside Washington with tough anti-establishment talk, but inside the Capitol, he appears to be softening his approach

February 27, 2015

Yahoo! News - Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas used a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday to rail against the party establishment, calling himself a “disruptive app” such as Uber that would upend the political system. Delighting the assembled conservative shock troops, Cruz castigated the Republican leadership for selling out its principles by separating a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security from a measure that would roll back President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.

“Unfortunately, Republican leadership is cutting a deal with Harry Reid and the Democrats to give in on executive amnesty,” Cruz told the applauding CPAC crowd of the looming votes to fund the agency, which will shut down Saturday if there is no action from Congress.

And yet just the day before, Cruz took a little-remarked-on action that seemed to belie his combative rhetoric. Talking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Cruz indicated he would not stop an agreement between Democratic and Republican leaders to proceed with a clean bill to fund the DHS and avoid a shutdown — the same agreement he lambasted in his CPAC speech. For the firebrand legislator, best known for his role in the politically disastrous 2013 government shutdown, it was an intriguing signal that he may be softening his famously hard-line approach.

Cruz’s position on the underlying legislation — that it’s a bad deal for conservatives who want to stop President Obama’s executive actions on immigration — remains unchanged. But Cruz apparently was openly accepting that he could not permanently block passage of the bill. In a smashmouth political culture in which legislators use every parliamentary tactic to gain advantage and seize the spotlight, the simple act of bowing to reality was noticeable.