The Trump administration announced that TSA workers will start getting paychecks on Monday, which is great, but if the situation is like previous government shutdowns, the Executive Branch does not have the resources to handle more than one pay period for TSA workers.
All House Republicans needed to do was not lose their collective minds and rubber-stamp it before leaving.
Since these are the House Republicans of Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, they immediately lost their minds, blew up everything, and instead are trying to get the Senate to pass a 60-day CR instead.
The problem is that the Senate has already left town on a two-week recess for Easter.
Why did House Republicans decide to shoot themselves in both feet?
Let’s let Speaker Mike Johnson explain:
This gambit that was done last night is a joke. I’m quite convinced that, that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna just read you one excerpt of it because it’s pretty alarming and it says everything that you need to know in section four. Uh, this is on, uh, page two of the bill.
This is, this is an actual. It’s an actual copy of the bill that that excerpt. It says, quote, the contents printed under the headings of this bill. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Security Operations under the heading of US Customs and Border Patrol and Protection shall have no force or effect for purposes of this act.
An amounts specified in the final bill under the subheading Border Security Operations, and under the heading US Customs and Border Protection. And under the headings of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security shall be zero. We’re not doing that, and it is unconscionable to me that the Democrats would force some sort of negotiation at three o’clock in the morning and try to hoist this among upon the American people and then get on their jets and go home for their holiday and, and pretend and think that we’re gonna go along with that.
The big House Republican idea is to pass a 60-day CR to fund ICE and border patrol, but in reality, that’s not the idea of House Republicans. The idea came from Trump.
Here are the not-so-subtle clues from Johnson that this bit of lunacy comes from Trump.
