Idaho's two Republican congressmen - Mike Simpson and Raul Labrador - landed on opposite sides of a politically hot issue Tuesday. The issue was whether to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year without including a rider attacking President Obama's executive order on immigration clemency.
Simpson, Idaho's senior House member, was put in charge of floor debate by Speaker John Boehner. Simpson said that while he agrees with GOP colleagues that the president overstepped legal bounds in unilaterally changing existing immigration law, trying to withhold funds to punish him wouldn't work.
As he put it - there is no funding in this bill for the president's executive actions. What it will lead to is a close-down of the Department of Homeland Security, and that is not a victory. That is dangerous.
But Labrador and most House Republicans - including Washington's Jaime Herrera Beutler and newly elected Dan Newhouse - scoffed at that. Labrador said Simpson and the speaker were wrong to claim the only alternative to this "bad deal" is a government shutdown. In the end, Washington Republicans Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dave Reichert voted for the clean bill, along with Oregon's sole GOP member, Greg Walden. But they were in a minority in the controlling party.
All Washington and Oregon Democrats also voted for the bill.
