Speaker John Boehner appears to be ready, willing and able to give House Minority Leader and former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the keys to the House of Representatives – and has done so twice in less than a week.
At issue is the continued funding of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which some Republicans were hoping to use to negate President Obama’s immigration orders.
The First Concession To Pelosi
The Hill reports that in a low point of his tenure as Speaker of the House, “more than 50 Republicans revolted” against Boehner last Friday in opposing a bill to fund the DHS for three more weeks.
It was a humiliating defeat for Boehner, who had to turn to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bail him out with only hours to spare before a shutdown at the agency.
The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that
Speaker John Boehner ’s plan to fund the department for three weeks came crashing down when 52 Republicans revolted. The revolters effectively put Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House. So the GOP will now consume itself in more recriminations as it squanders more of its first 100 days.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to predict the possibility of even more dire consequences to Boehner’s failure to take control of the Republican led House:
The immigration fiasco raises the larger question of whether House Republicans can even function as a majority. Some backbenchers are whispering that they’ll work with Democrats to oust Mr. Boehner as Speaker if he doesn’t follow their shutdown strategy. Some are also plotting to take down a procedural rule, which would mean handing control to Democrats.
The Second Concession To Pelosi
Next, Speaker Boehner announced this week that the House could vote as early as Tuesday on a clean DHS funding bill.
The reason – a little known procedure known simply as Rule 22.
The National Review Online reports that Rule 22 “allows any House member to force a vote on a bill if the Senate refuses to create a conference committee,” adding that “Senate Democrats filibustered the creation of a conference committee on Monday evening, thwarting the process by which the House and Senate might have ironed out the differences between the DHS appropriations bills passed by the two chambers,” and opening the door for House Democrats to force a vote.
Concerned that Pelosi would call such a vote, Boehner decided to act preemptively to insure the bill appears to have been created by a Republican.
A Republican congressman all but confirmed this fact, telling the National Review Online that Speaker Boehner told the Republican Conference that “Pelosi could [force a vote] but he hoped it would be done by a GOP appropriator.” Boehner quickly followed this up by making the announcement that the House would vote on a clean DHS bill this week.
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