Boehner in Another GOP Quandary Over Border-Funding Request

A fa­mil­i­ar ques­tion that has marked much of this Con­gress is fes­ter­ing again over a le­gis­lat­ive re­sponse to the bor­der crisis: How much is Speak­er John Boehner will­ing to sidestep a ma­jor­ity in his party in or­der to pass any or all of the emer­gency fund­ing re­ques­ted by Pres­id­ent Obama?

On Tues­day morn­ing, House Re­pub­lic­ans will con­fer privately across the street from the Cap­it­ol in their reg­u­larly sched­uled weekly meet­ing to dis­cuss, among oth­er top­ics, Obama’s re­quest for $3.7 bil­lion to deal with the surge of un­ac­com­pan­ied minors to the U.S.-Mex­ico bor­der.

There is a good chance a ma­jor­ity of GOP law­makers will want to at­tach strings be­fore ap­prov­ing Obama’s re­quest, and some could pro­pose al­tern­at­ives to his plan al­to­geth­er. In either case, the ques­tion is wheth­er Boehner will stick to a pro­cess that is com­pli­ant with the so-called Hastert Rule, the in­form­al GOP prac­tice that bars a vote on le­gis­la­tion un­less it has the sup­port of a ma­jor­ity of House Re­pub­lic­ans. (It is named for former Speak­er Den­nis Hastert of Illinois.)

On Monday, the in­com­ing House ma­jor­ity whip—Steve Scal­ise, who just weeks ago was lead­er of the 170 con­ser­vat­ives in the House Re­pub­lic­an Study Com­mit­tee—would not an­swer that ques­tion when it was posed to him twice.

Scal­ise offered only that House Re­pub­lic­ans are now com­ing up with “our own plan.” And he pre­dicted “it’s go­ing to solve the prob­lems,” a ref­er­ence to the crisis of thou­sands of chil­dren com­ing to the south­ern bor­der.

Part of the House Re­pub­lic­an meet­ing on Tues­day morn­ing will be a brief­ing by the speak­er’s own “Bor­der Work­ing Group” that was set to ar­rive Monday night back in Wash­ing­ton from a trip to Cent­ral Amer­ica.

House GOP lead­er­ship aides said the work­ing group, led by Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, will not likely be ready to un­veil spe­cif­ic le­gis­lat­ive re­com­mend­a­tions to deal with the crisis, and in­stead will mostly provide an up­date on what they saw and learned on the trip.

But among the changes that sev­er­al GOP aides said will most likely be tar­geted in any Re­pub­lic­an le­gis­la­tion taken up be­fore law­makers break for their Au­gust re­cess is a law that ac­tu­ally took ef­fect in 2008 un­der former Pres­id­ent Bush.

That bi­par­tis­an stat­ute was in­ten­ded to curb child traf­fick­ing, but some law­makers on both sides of the polit­ic­al aisle are now blam­ing it for help­ing to ex­acer­bate the cur­rent crisis.

In fact, Rep. Henry Cuel­lar, D-Texas, has been talk­ing about le­gis­la­tion to al­ter that law. The idea would be to al­low all im­mig­rant chil­dren at the bor­der to be vol­un­tar­ily re­turned home to their fam­il­ies rather than held for de­port­a­tion hear­ings, a swifter pro­cess already al­lowed for un­doc­u­mented young im­mig­rants from Mex­ico and Canada.

But op­pon­ents say that would un­der­mine the pur­pose of the 2008 law—by send­ing people back to places where they prob­ably won’t be safe.

On Monday even­ing, Home­land Se­cur­ity Sec­ret­ary Jeh John­son met privately with House Blue Dog Demo­crats on that is­sue.

Mean­while, sen­at­ors from both parties are set to re­ceive a private brief­ing on the same is­sue as well as on the pres­id­ent’s over­all fund­ing re­quest from John­son; Health and Hu­man Ser­vices Sec­ret­ary Sylvia Math­ews Bur­well; act­ing Of­fice of Man­age­ment and Budget Dir­ect­or Bri­an Dees; and Deputy At­tor­ney Gen­er­al James Cole.

In the House, con­sid­er­a­tion of the pres­id­ent’s $3.7 bil­lion re­quest is of­fi­cially un­der con­sid­er­a­tion by ap­pro­pri­at­ors, though no hear­ings had been set as of Monday. Ap­pro­pri­ations Chair­man Har­old Ro­gers, R-Ky., says his com­mit­tee will take a thor­ough look at what is be­ing pro­posed over the com­ing days and weeks. He also has said it is clear that ad­di­tion­al fund­ing is needed to take care of these chil­dren, to “en­force the law,” and to “fur­ther se­cure the bor­der.”

Out­side of Con­gress, some con­ser­vat­ives such as Her­it­age Ac­tion CEO Mi­chael Need­ham have said they are eager to see changes in laws that are ham­per­ing the abil­ity to deal with the surge. And in what could loom as a battle cry for some House Re­pub­lic­ans, Need­ham has said the bor­der-se­cur­ity is­sues should be ad­dressed “through the reg­u­lar ap­pro­pri­ations pro­cess where pri­or­it­ies can be re­ordered and spend­ing can oc­cur with­in the es­tab­lished budget caps.”

Pub­licly, at least, Boehner has already said some of the things con­ser­vat­ives want to hear. He has de­clared the House is not giv­ing Obama “a blank check,” and he has called this a crisis of the pres­id­ent’s “own mak­ing.” And on Monday, a House GOP lead­er­ship aide pre­dicted Boehner will likely seek both to force the White House to “take a hair­cut” on the dol­lar amount—and to “take on bor­der se­cur­ity pro­vi­sions.”

But will that be enough?

Boehner could once again find him­self locked in try­ing to quench the of­ten un­quench­able de­mands of con­ser­vat­ives who don’t want any more spend­ing out­side of the es­tab­lished ap­pro­pri­ations pro­cess and budget caps.

And while do­ing so, he once again has to be meas­ur­ing the po­ten­tial ali­en­a­tion of House Demo­crats whose votes he might ul­ti­mately need to pass such a meas­ure.

But House Rules Com­mit­tee Chair­man Pete Ses­sions, him­self from Texas, pre­dicted the Hastert Rule won’t even come up in this pro­cess, say­ing House Re­pub­lic­ans will unite be­hind an ap­proach.

“That’s the prob­lem,” re­spon­ded Rep. Louise Slaughter, the top Demo­crat on the House Rules Com­mit­tee. She said Re­pub­lic­ans ap­pear dead-set on de­vis­ing a re­sponse to the pres­id­ent without any re­gard to House Demo­crat­ic in­put—or wheth­er their bill has any real chance of be­com­ing law by passing the Demo­crat­ic-led Sen­ate.

“I’m not even sure many of them un­der­stand that’s the pro­cess—it has to pass two houses to be­come law,” Slaughter said.

But Boehner cer­tainly un­der­stands that. The ques­tion is, how does he play this out?