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Any Senator, at anytime, for any reason can call a filibuster. And it takes 60 votes to override a filibuster. And the Republicans in the Senate - like the Democrats before them, don't have 60 votes.
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The current Kabuki Theater comes courtesy of the Tea Party Republicans and President Obama.
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Last year, like the 3 years before that, the House Republicans refused to take up an Immigration Bill that passed the Senate with Republican and Democratic votes. So President Obama made this rather innocuous move.
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President Obama redirected the the Immigration Department (which is under Homeland Security) to focus on serious criminals in the US system for deportation, not otherwise law abiding immigrants.
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Had he stopped there, the Right would be in uproar. Since they were demonizing him anyway, he went one further. If an immigrant had a child or close relative that was legally in the United States, had paid taxes for 5 years and had not criminal history, that person could apply for legal status.
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And howls of "amnesty" went up and the Republicans start frothing at the mouth.
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This delayed our national budget to the point that Congress finally passed spending authorization for a year, but funded Homeland Security for only 2 months.
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As an aside, this was called, by the by, a "Cromnibus" - Brangelina type amalgamation of "Continuing Resolution" and "Omnibus spending bills", although it sounds a little like a sex act on public transportation.
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Since then the House of Representatives passed a funding law for the DHS, but that legally revokes the President's action on registering immigrants. And then they went a step further.
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| You can see the spin: Washington Post (rather centrist) blames republicans and Fox News (rather right wing) lays the blame on the Democrats. All the regular actors are taking up their roles. |
The House of Representatives passed a law reversing the older policy of the nation - and many states - making "dreamers" legal. "Dreamers" in our parlance are those immigrants that were brought here illegally when they were very young. The Dream Act made those immigrants legal residents if they were in school or the military, had been brought here as minors and had no arrests. Before that, they would apply for college, maybe get a scholarship or maybe get deported. Often to countries where they didn't know the language or have relatives any longer.
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The funding which passed the House of Representatives can't pass the Senate. And, technically, only the House of Representatives can initiate a funding bill. The result is a bit in the air at this point. The Senate may try to "fix" the DHS funding and remove the immigration pieces, but the House says it won't pass that (a "clean" bill).
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This looks bad for the Republicans who wanted to use their majorities in the 2 years until the next election to prove they were "grown ups that can govern".
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It isn't really that much of a big deal, since about 225,000 of the 255,000 employees of the DHS work in "essential" jobs and have to work anyway. But if the TSA (those people at the airports) are laid off again, then the squealing will be pretty damn loud.
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And so we return to the place we never left, the asinine Kabuki theater that American Politics has become.