Rubio blames Dems for DHS fight

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) blamed Senate Democrats for the current standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security during a Tuesday event in New Hampshire.

{mosads}Speaking at St. Anselm College’s Politics & Eggs event in the early primary state, the likely 2016 hopeful blamed his Democratic colleagues who’ve filibustered debate on the House’s bill for the current standoff. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a bill to continue DHS funds include language overturning Obama’s executive action halting the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants.

“The bigger problem we have here is the Democrats are filibustering the House bill. The House has passed a bill, they don’t like something that’s in the bill, they refuse to let us begin the debate on it,” Rubio said in response to a question about the standoff. “My first initial ask is, let’s just start debating this bill. Stop your filibuster. Let’s get on the bill, let’s have a debate.”

The DHS will run out of funds Saturday and congressional Republicans are casting about for a way to get out of the current fight as polls indicate they’re likely to take the blame.

On Monday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered to split off the parts of the bill attacking President Obama’s executive actions from any bill on DHS funding. But it’s unclear whether House Republicans will go along with this strategy.

Rubio pointed out that government workers deemed essential will be forced to keep working for no pay.

“Homeland Security will continue to function, what we need to point out is border patrol agents, TSA agents and others will not be getting paid, which will not make flying a pleasant experience if you know what I mean,” he said with a laugh. “Obviously they will be paid once it’s reopened, retroactively … but it will function.”

The potential presidential candidate has been sounding an increasingly hawkish tone on border issues in the last few months after suffering blowback from the party base for his support of comprehensive immigration reform.

He took aim at Obama’s executive actions in the speech, calling them “unconstitutional” and warning of “unintended consequences no one’s thought through in terms of triggering another migratory crisis or even tax credits that it makes millions of people eligible for that we haven’t budgeted for.”

Rubio also argued Obama’s actions make it harder to get immigration reform done before pointedly saying he thought it would be best to secure the border first before acting on other aspects of the issue.

“I think the real solution to immigration is a series of pieces of legislation, not executive actions, that deal with this issue,” he said. “In my mind that begins with proving to people that we’re going to enforce our immigration laws. The hardest lesson of the last two years has been people are willing to be very reasonable about immigration but not until you prove to them that future illegal immigration will be controlled.”