“I don’t think it would be a problem getting a majority of votes out of the House” to impeach Obama, said a conservative House Republican. “But once it got to the Senate, it’s not going to go anywhere. … Not everybody is going to agree with this, but we got a lot on our plate right now of things we’ve got to fix immediately rather than doing some type of symbolic action.”
Yet even with impeachment off table — or nearly so — Congress and the White House are on a collision course on a whole host of issues. The House GOP-authored bill to deal with the influx of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border has not yet been unveiled. If it makes it to the House floor and passes — expected to happen later this week — it will be dead on arrival in the Senate. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) chamber is going to have a tough time passing its own bill. No legislation to deal with the crisis will make it to Obama’s desk before Congress leaves for the August recess.
And when Congress returns in September, it has to work together to fund the government as the Senate — locked in a partisan battle between Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — has yet to approve any of the 2015 spending bills, much less hash out a deal with the House over its funding proposals.
And if that goes off track, the federal government is at risk of shutting down just weeks before the midterm election. Such a scenario is considered very unlikely by lawmakers and aides on both sides of the aisle in both chambers, but in the current Congress, anything — or almost anything — is possible.
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