Obama Will Warn GOP Against Homeland Security Shutdown

PHIL­ADELPHIA—Pres­id­ent Obama will strike a de­fi­ant tone today at a gath­er­ing of House Demo­crats, call­ing on Con­gress to roll back se­quest­ra­tion cuts and jab­bing Re­pub­lic­ans for threat­en­ing fund­ing for the Home­land Se­cur­ity De­part­ment.

Obama plans use the party re­treat to pre­view his budget pro­pos­al, which will be re­leased Monday. While the plan has no chance of mak­ing its way through a GOP-con­trolled Con­gress, it’s a vehicle for Demo­crats to out­line clear policy pri­or­it­ies—which many lead­ers be­lieve the party failed to do dur­ing the 2014 midterms.

The White House jumped on a quote this week from Re­pub­lic­an Rep. Mario Diaz-Bal­art that it wouldn’t be “the end of the world” if DHS fund­ing lapsed. “[T]he pres­id­ent will join the Demo­crats in Con­gress in vehe­mently op­pos­ing that dan­ger­ous view and call­ing for a clean fund­ing bill to en­sure we are fund­ing our na­tion­al se­cur­ity pri­or­it­ies in the face of cy­ber­se­cur­ity and se­cur­ity threats abroad,” said an ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial.

Obama wasn’t alone in chal­len­ging Re­pub­lic­ans to pony up the fund­ing. “Re­pub­lic­ans will­ing­ness to put their polit­ic­al se­cur­ity ahead of na­tion­al se­cur­ity is a dis­grace,” Rep. Ben Ray Lu­jan, the newly named head of the Demo­crat­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, told re­port­ers at the House Demo­crats’ re­treat. “The Amer­ic­an people de­serve bet­ter.”

The White House has threatened to veto a GOP plan that ex­tends DHS fund­ing while re­vers­ing Obama’s ex­ec­ut­ive ac­tions to pro­tect il­leg­al im­mig­rants from de­port­a­tion. Re­pub­lic­ans have said they don’t want the de­part­ment to shut down, but they strongly be­lieve that Obama’s ex­ec­ut­ive ac­tions are il­leg­al and should be blocked by Con­gress.

Mean­while, Obama will call for an end to se­quest­ra­tion, the auto­mat­ic and in­dis­crim­in­ate budget cuts that went in­to ef­fect in 2013, slash­ing ex­pendit­ures for al­most every fed­er­al agency. Obama “will pro­pose to end the across-the-board se­quester cuts that threaten our eco­nomy and our mil­it­ary,” said the White House of­fi­cial. “The Pres­id­ent be­lieves we should end the era of man­u­fac­tured crises and mind­less aus­ter­ity.”

Even be­fore its re­lease, Obama’s pro­pos­al drew praise from Demo­crats on the Hill. “Ar­bit­rary cuts through se­quest­ra­tion nev­er made sense, and House Demo­crats have con­sist­ently sup­por­ted re­pla­cing them with a smarter, more bal­anced ap­proach to long-term de­fi­cit re­duc­tion,” Budget Com­mit­tee rank­ing mem­ber Chris Van Hol­len said in a state­ment.

Demo­crats gathered here said their caucus needs to get bet­ter at draw­ing dis­tinc­tions with Re­pub­lic­ans, draw­ing policy con­trasts des­pite serving in the minor­ity. Rep. Steve Is­rael cited a middle-class tax cut pro­posed by Van Hol­len a few weeks ago as a step in the right dir­ec­tion, and party lead­ers will no doubt use Obama’s budget pri­or­it­ies to sim­il­ar ef­fect.

Is­rael, among oth­ers, said Demo­crats are eager to rally around Obama’s State of the Uni­on ad­dress to guide the party’s goals for the year. “[Obama] set the table, and now we’ve got to dish out the meal le­gis­lat­ively,” he said. “That was the per­fect launch for a mes­sage that we can all gal­van­ize and mo­bil­ize around.”