Arizona senator John McCain stopped by Face the Nation this morning to discuss ISIS, national security, and the looming showdown over funding for the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
McCain said that while he and his constituents are “angry” over actions that the president himself has repeatedly admitted were unconstitutional, he feels that the measures should be fought in the courts. He argued that the recent injunction against the actions, granted by a federal judge to the 26 states currently suing to stop the president, provided an “exit sign” out of the DHS funding fight.
“I’d love to be a friend of whoever is taking this case all the way up to the United States Supreme Court,” McCain said, adding that he was confident that the matter would ultimately be settled there, and that the states would prevail. As for shutting down DHS, McCain said he opposed that plan of attack, and believed it would ultimately fail in the Senate.
“I don’t want to see that movie again,” he said, referring to the 2013 government shutdown, and specifically to the thousands of visitors turned away from national parks in its wake. Left unsaid was that a possible DHS shutdown would affect only a small percentage of the agency’s workforce, since 87 percent of Homeland Security employees are deemed “essential,” meaning they must continue working in a shutdown, and the other 13 percent can easily be recalled to work in an emergency.
One way or another, it won’t be long before McCain is proved right or wrong about the wisdom of the DHS fight: The agency’s funding is scheduled to run out this week.
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