To be brief, we are witnessing yet another acute incident in the dysfunctionality of the U.S. federal government that has characterized the course of the Obama administration and the rise of the Tea Party movement. On the one hand, two dogmatically partisan Republican-controlled houses of Congress cannot conceive of a mutually acceptable method for funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in view of the mutually accepted opposition from Republicans in both chambers to Obama's expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for undocumented immigrants, administered through DHS. On the other hand, evoking their infinite wisdom on foreign policy management, Congressional Republicans will enjoy, by Congressional invitation, long awaited prognostications from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu warning against any diplomatic arrangement between the West and Iran on nuclear development, notwithstanding the likelihood of a boycott of Netanyahu's speech from Congressional Democrats and virtual repudiation of Netanyahu's visit by the Obama administration. Thus, the U.S. federal government is, again, demonstrating a capacity for petty political gesturing over significant and pertinent domestic and now foreign policy issues contested between the legislative and executive branches of government.
Concerning the struggle over DHS funding, it seems virtually axiomatic that the Republican Party will not only lose in any struggle with the Obama administration over expanded deferral on deportations for prescribed categories of undocumented immigrants but that the efforts of Congressional Republicans will reinforce a broader consensus that the ideologically conservative, ethno-linguistic nationalism embodied within the mainstream of the Republican Party does not and cannot adequately reflect the changing demographics of the American electorate. First, the Republican Senate majority is insufficient to achieve cloture, under current Senate rules for debate, and, thus, counteract Democratic filibuster threats against legislative initiatives considered within the chamber. The key point here may be that Republican Senate leadership maintains the capacity to change cloture rules in order to stifle the capacity of Senate Democrats to filibuster. However, like the change on rules for floor debate of Obama administration appointees in the previous session, any change in the rules on floor debate in the Senate hold the capacity to take root permanently and transform the larger political "culture"/decorum of the upper chamber. Moreover, any change in Senate rules is unlikely to meaningfully empower Congressional Republicans in either chamber in its relations with the President - Obama still holds a veto pen that he will certainly utilize as much as any other President in U.S. history! Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, for all his endearing bellicosity, realizes perfectly well that he will be banging his head against a brick wall if he tries to get around Senate Democratic opposition to an elimination of expanded DACA eligibility by shredding their capacity to filibuster disagreeable legislation.
Moving over to the House, Speaker John Boehner remains stuck with a Tea Party caucus and similarly aligned hyper-conservatives who have no intention on giving the Obama administration an inch on any policy in which it might at least be perceived that the administration could come out looking even moderately victorious in its dealings with Congress. To be succinct, the issue here is less policy driven than it is incited by a larger and, if we discount any specific and apparently distasteful racial logic, irrational animus felt by the constituents of many House Republicans toward the President. I would hold that the current dysfunction of the federal government is ultimately rooted within such an animus, held across broad swaths of the (rapidly shrinking) White, over-50, and rural demographic within the American electorate from which the message of the Tea Party movements has enjoyed so much adherence. However much Boehner might actually want to sit down with McConnell and Obama to hash out meaningful compromises through which traditional Republican constituencies get some sort of benefit from a two-house Republican Congressional majority, such deals are not going to arise unless Boehner is content to repeatedly overthrow the "Hastert rule" (i.e. the Speaker will not bring legislation up for a floor vote without the support of a majority of the majority party). As such, the Congressional exercise of legislative initiative is being held hostage by a tenuous majority of House Republicans who insist that they will only pass legislation if it overthrows the legislative and policy initiatives of the Obama administration solely because whatever denies the President of his policy priorities is good!
Expanding further on DACA expansion as the nominal issue in play within the struggle over DHS funding, Obama's decision to expand DACA eligibility in December was obviously inferior to a legislative reform of immigration standards. However, in view of the current disposition of the American electorate and the continued inability of Democrats to muster, for mid-term elections, significant numbers of younger voters, Hispanics, and other voting blocs nominally supportive of expanded eligibility for permanent residency and citizenship for immigrant populations, inclusive of long-term undocumented workers and students, the federal government is stewing in the broader ideological (and regional) differences that currently characterize the larger American electorate. That is to say, as I have argued before on this blog, if the country wants someone to blame for the dysfunction in Washington, then we all need to look in the mirror and get passed the mythology of the "uncompromising American."
If, for the most part, most members of my family and close friends in this area (of Bluer than Blue Massachusetts!) tend to situate themselves somewhere on the far right of the Democratic Party if not the ranks of the Republican Party, then I can attest to the intense emotional appeal held by the argument, brandished by Fox News and other relatively conservative news sources, that Obama cannot be allowed to grant blanket amnesties to migrants who defied the legal mechanisms for citizenship that our grandparents had to negotiate in order to enjoy the promises of opportunity that America extended. This sort of argument exerts even more force when it is combined with the imagery of immigrants crossing borders to feast extravagantly on generous welfare benefits, thus imposing greater burdens on an overtaxed middle class to feed people who shouldn't even be here. It does little to point out the fact that most undocument migrants come to enjoy labor incomes, superior to income opportunities within their home economies, in industries where the presence of such workers (and the precarious nature of their residency in the U.S.) places downward pressure on wages and, thus, maintains lower prices for U.S. consumer markets (e.g. meat processing industries, where kill floors and production lines are currently dominated by Latin American migrants - would anyone in the U.S. with an annual household income under $50,000 be able to afford even lesser beef cuts like bottom round if the steers from which they were taken were not killed and dismembered by Mayans from Chiapas and Oaxaca?!). Moreover, even moderately conservative opponents of expanded eligibility for residency and citizenship for largely brown-skinned Hispanic or Asiatic migrants do not want to be reminded of the differential ethnic, racial, and cultural circumstances attending the admission or denial of current immigrant populations relative to those in place when my grandparents and great-grandparents, of White, European stock, came down from Québec in the 1890s and 1920s. I think it suffices to say that, on the issue of immigration reform, most Americans need a refresher on the similarities between the aspirations and hopes espoused by contemporary undocumented migrant workers and by our own immigrant ancestors, for whom a low wage job in a dirty, unregulated, dangerous New England textile mill, New York sweatshop, or Chicago slaughterhouse represented an improvement on the meager prospects to eak out a living on often sterile soil back home.
Concluding on this issue, at a moment in which the Islamic State and al Qaeda appear to be engaged, at least to some extent, in a contest for the hearts and minds of young militant Salafists, in part, through demonstrations of their respective commitments to support a war of terror against the West on European and American soil, this probably isn't an appropriate time to play kick the can on DHS funding that, among other things, supports security for transportation infrastructures and ports of entry. To whatever extent Tea Party House Republicans want to attest that they are standing up for Constitutional principles in opposing Obama's heavy-handed non-legislative tactics to expand DACA, if it comes at the expense of creating conditions that militant Salafists seeking the opportunity to kill large numbers of Americans in public places on American soil could profit from, then it would be worth asking whether such a principled defense of legislative prerogatives was actually merited at this moment. For that matter, the Obama administration has placed Congressional Republicans in such an untenable position on immigration policy management, through the fiscal framework of DHS funding that also governs a wide range of other national security programs, that, assuming the current federal judicial challenge to DACA expansion by Texas falls through, the Republican Party is simply going to have to swallow the bitter pill of circumscribed immigration reform by executive order as a cost of preventing possible catastrophic effects from a prolonged lack of funding for DHS. Moreover, in its continuing attempts to respect the demands of a constituency that is increasingly unrepresentative of the mainstream American electorate with respect to immigration policy, the Republican Party is going to continue to alienate constituencies that it desperately needs to attract in much larger numbers to succeed in Presidential contests. For this reason, barring electoral trickery, it should be a foregone conclusion that no Republican will sit in the Oval Office for some time to come!
In regard to Netanyahu's speech to what will be a largely Republican Congressional audience tomorrow, several media sources, especially in the Israeli press (see Nahum Barnea, "Netanyahu's speech - historic or hysteric?" Ynetnews.com (2 March 2015), at: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4632387,00.html) have speculated that Bibi's trip to Washington holds more symbolic significance in relation to Israeli domestic politics and, in particular, the performance of Netanyahu's Likud Party in parliamentary elections on March 17. In fact, Haaretz has reported that Likud may lose 3 to 4 seats to the center-left Zionist Union coalition (see Jonathan Lis, "Likud fears it may only win 18 seats in upcoming election," Haaretz (1 March 2015), at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-election-2015/.premium-1.644711#!). Against the backdrop of circumstances within which Netanyahu may either be forced out of the Prime Minister's post altogether or forced into a more constraining coalition government, his addresses to the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and Congressional Republicans (and certain Jewish Democrats, apparently under protest) intend to play to an audience back home in order to reinforce the efficacy of Netanyahu's foreign policy hard line, particularly on Iranian nuclear development, and to reassert Israeli influence on American foreign policy, even under circumstances where the Obama administration has been relatively cold toward Netanyahu's government. In these respects, Netanyahu's trip to Washington may generate some limited successes enhancing Likud's performance at the polls.
On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Netanyahu's speech to Congress, neither solicited through the Obama administration nor undertaken in concert with an official meeting between the two chief executives, will have a desired effect in shaping U.S. negotiating strategies with Iranian delegates to discussions on curtailing Iranian nuclear development in Geneva. Insofar as the subject of Iranian nuclear development will be the critical focus for Netanyahu's speech to Congress, it would seem that, from an Israeli foreign policy standpoint, any Israeli efforts to alter the American position on Iranian uranium enrichment parameters should be gauged by their probabilities for success. On the contrary, Netanyahu and Congressional Republican leadership, most notably Boehner, have created a situation in which, as a matter of the Constitutional separation of powers between branches and traditional executive discretion in the field of foreign policy, Obama will almost certainly feel empowered to disregard every point addressed by Netanyahu as a matter of reasserting the dominance of the Office of President in developing and executing foreign policy over Congressional interference. That is to say, both as a strategy to bolster his stature in Israeli elections and to convey Israeli fears that any negotiated agreement with Iran over nuclear development will inadequately defend Israeli national security interests, Netanyahu may be miscalculating the potential benefits of brazenly communicating Israeli criticisms of a key element in Obama's current foreign policy initiatives in Washington without the administration's invitation!
Likewise, read against Republican criticisms that Obama's exercise of executive powers has overstepped Constitutional limitations and invaded areas of Congressional jurisdiction (e.g. DACA expansion), Boehner's extension of an invitation to Netanyahu clearly reflects a "tit-for-tat" mentality. The implications of a progressive invasion, by Congress, into the mechanisms for development and execution of American foreign policy, however, portend strongly negative consequences, not least for Western negotiations over Iranian nuclear development but for a wide range of policy issues in which clear differences of perspective exist between the executive and legislative branches. Is it conceivable, in this respect, that Congress might, on certain foreign policy issues in the future, choose to create independent diplomatic bodies, directly answerable to Congressional committees, in order to directly impose Congressional preferences in areas of disagreement with a future administration? Such efforts, in my opinion, would directly transgress separations of power in the execution of foreign policy, specified under Articles I and II of the Constitution, inevitably to be sorted out by the federal judiciary. Given the acrimonious character of contemporary federal politics, such a conflict does not seem entirely inconceivable.
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