GOP should stop holding DHS hostage

When Otto von Bismarck compared the process of making laws to making sausage — saying in both cases it is better not to observe the process — he likely never imagined that sausage factories like Congress would keep accidentally shutting themselves down. And yet, come Feb. 27, the Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to run out of money amid the latest congressional soap opera.

The dispute concerns President Barack Obama’s executive actions, taken last year, to protect some illegal immigrants who already reside in the country from deportation. Republicans in Congress believe that the actions are unconstitutional, and, in the wake of a Texas federal court ruling that temporarily halted the actions, wish to defund them. Republicans quickly passed a bill in the House that both funds the DHS and prohibits that money from implementing Obama’s anti-deportation scheme. Though in the minority, Senate Democrats have filibustered the bill, preventing it from reaching Obama’s desk for what would be a certain veto. If an agreement can’t be reached, there will be no funding bill for the DHS by the Feb. 27 deadline.

This latest of the hostage-taking, funding-style drama is petty and based on an illogical interpretation of Congress’s power of the purse. Before showing why, two facts are worth highlighting that have, as usual, been lost in the media confusion.

First, the Department of Homeland Security will not actually shut down if the funding deadline passes. Instead, workers deemed “non-essential” to DHS functioning would be furloughed (given time off without pay) until the funding resumes. Security services like the TSA would still be fully functional.

Second, the federal judge in Texas who issued the injunction merely halted implementation of Obama’s actions until the lawsuit runs its course. The government will likely appeal, and there is good evidence to suggest that the circuit court will, rather quickly, uphold the president’s deportation protection as constitutional due to this great irony: Obama’s policy of deciding which illegal immigrants to deport and which to protect has not happened in a vacuum, but is actually an outgrowth of — you guessed it — Congress’ power to appropriate.

This is because Congress never appropriates enough funds each year to deport every illegal immigrant in America. In fact, it only designates enough money to deport roughly 400,000 of the 11 million illegal immigrants annually, according to Slate. Obama’s decision not to deport certain individuals continues a tradition followed by presidents for years, and it doesn’t even factor in that Obama has overseen one of the largest deportation regimes in American history, prompting The Economist to refer to his immigration policy as “America’s deportation machine.”

If the DHS won’t shut down, and the federal judge didn’t actually validate Republican lawmakers’ claims that Obama’s action is unconstitutional, and Obama’s action really is constitutional, then why the fuss?

There shouldn’t be any. Congress’ ability to restrict funding for certain executive actions is one thing, but conflating the power of the purse with the power to hold funding for anything hostage in exchange for restricting executive orders is a terrible interpretation of that particular aspect of the Constitution. But that’s what the GOP have embarrassingly done.

In United States v. MacCollom (1976), the Supreme Court said, “The expenditure of public funds is proper only when authorized by Congress, not that public funds may be expended unless prohibited by Congress.”

If the GOP is serious about subverting Obama’s deportation easing, it should send him a bill pursuant to the MacCollom decision that appropriates enough funds to actually deport people. As it stands, Obama couldn’t deport the 5 million people his plan protects even if he wanted to. To resolve the current situation, the DHS funding bill should stripped off the anti-Obama clause. Short of that, Congress could also pass a clean (but short-term) stopgap measure that funds the DHS until the courts either validate or strike down Obama’s executive action, something that sensible conservatives like John McCain have called for in recent days.

Sadly, the media on the left doesn’t care about solutions, either — they care about scoring as many political points on the GOP as possible. In a spectacular example of polling chicanery, CNN asked voters who would get the most blame if the DHS shut down. From the list of choices, 53 percent of Americans said they would hold the GOP in Congress responsible, 30 percent said they would fault Obama and 13 percent said both. This seems convincing — until you consider that CNN didn’t even list “Democrats in Congress” as an option, a really depressing realization.

Be it laws or polls, sometimes it’s a more blissful existence when you don’t know what goes into the sausage.

Nathaniel Haas is a junior majoring in political science and economics. His column, “State of the Union,” runs Fridays.