Mitch PerryAmong the many links on this morning’s Drudge Report is a story by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Marco Rubio essentially saying that Congress should pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security without conditions. There are just eight days remaining before funding for DHS will run out, with the House and Senate at loggerheads about a provision passed by the House that defunds DHS unless the president rescinds his executive actions on immigration (which was delayed by a federal judge earlier this week).
The article is headlined,”Rubio: Homeland Security funding must continue despite immigration fight,” which is a straight-up headline. However, Drudge’s link on his own page says,”Rubio folds: Fund ‘Homeland Security’ …”
That provocative headline touched exactly the buttons that Drudge intended, with the Florida senator receiving major pushback from conservatives. Rubio’s spokesman insists Marco does not want a “clean bill” that funds DHS without stripping out his executive actions on immigration. But Rubio also doesn’t want DHS to go without funding, saying, “We have to fund Homeland Security … Look, I’m in favor of any measure that has a chance of succeeding that could stop the new order, but the truth of the matter is the president’s not going to sign it, and we don’t have the votes to pass it in the Senate. We can’t let Homeland Security shut down.”
Rubio is acknowledging reality here, folks, something that fellow GOP Senators John McCain, Jeff Flake and Mark Kirk have been saying for the past week or so: A Senate bill funding DHS with the president’s actions removed will not pass the Senate, and if it did, would still be vetoed by President Obama. So why all the drama?
Rubio deserves credit for dealing with the facts on the ground. But it also shows how once again how potent (toxic?) immigration is with a bloc of Republicans, who excoriated him two years ago for being a leader in the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed in the Senate, and that he almost immediately began backing away from.
How this little drama plays out is unknown at this time, since Congress is still on vacation until next week.
In other news …
Transportation is always a major topic in the Tampa Bay area — or the lack of it.
It was front and center at the Tampa Downtown Partnership’s City Council forum with the candidates running for office Wednesday morning.
One mode of transportation that has people on both the political left and the political right fired up about is that public-private plan for a high-speed ferry service, which ultimately could run from Tampa to St. Pete. On Wednesday Hillsborough County commissioners voted unanimously to state that yes, even though there’s an enormous amount of issues to contend with, they still very much support the idea.
On Tuesday night, the first of 36 public meetings on getting the public’s opinion about what the country should spend on public transportation issues was held in West Tampa. Only 35 more meetings to go.
