Last Call For Making Good On Their Threat

Behold what two-thirds of you not voting in November hath wrought, America.  Republicans are now making the country choose between the Secret Service and President Obama's immigration order, and one of them will be getting the budget axe thanks to the GOP.

Indeed, the whole arrangement is a fragile patchwork since the Department of Homeland Security — of which the Service is a part — is guaranteed funding only under a continuing resolution that expires Feb. 27.

How did it reach this point?

Top lawmakers in both parties and the White House acquiesced to the compromise, which was judged the fastest way to send Congress home, avoid a shutdown and put the rest of the government on permanent footing through Sept. 30 next year.

But it was House Republicans who really drove the bargain because the GOP insisted on holding Homeland hostage as a spending vehicle with which to challenge Obama over his Nov. 20 executive order shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation.

Before the Homeland CR runs out, Republicans can count on being fully in charge of Congress. Their immediate target is the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the office within Homeland that will implement Obama’s order including the issuance of temporary work permits for qualified individuals who come forward.

Ironically enough, USCIS is largely self-funded, living off the fees it collects and not the relatively small share of annual appropriations it gets from Congress. By contrast, the Secret Service is wholly dependent on appropriations and now caught in the political crossfire.

“There was absolutely no intention to freeze the Secret Service,” said a House Republican aide, who quickly added that “the president must bear some responsibility for any fallout that occurs as a result of the Homeland CR.”

So after complaining that the US Secret Service is underfunded, understaffed, and in need of reform Republicans cut $50 million from the USSS budget to put Obama in his place over immigration.  So if the Secret Service is stretched too thin, with a President that already gets more threats than any in modern history, of course that's where "patriots" like today's GOP make budget cuts.

After all, "the president must bear some responsibility for any fallout that occurs".

Republican hatred of Obama is now a direct threat to the safety of the President of the United States.  Remember that.