"House of Cards": How the Real-Life Frank Underwood Is Staring Down the DHS Showdown - East Idaho News
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“House of Cards”: How the Real-Life Frank Underwood Is Staring Down the DHS Showdown

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022715 RepSteveScalise?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1425061308548U.S. Congress(WASHINGTON) — What would Frank Underwood do?

As the House of Representatives’ majority whip — a role famously depicted in the Netflix hit series House of Cards — it’s a question Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., ponders as Capitol Hill faces a showdown over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

“I think he’d storm over to the Senate chamber and just start maybe voting some people’s machines ‘yes’ to get the bill brought up,” Scalise joked of the fictional character played by Kevin Spacey. “He’d take matters into his own hands over in the Senate.”

Scalise, who didn’t start watching House of Cards until after he became majority whip in August, said the fictional Washington depicted in the show bears only a limited semblance to reality.

“They depict the Capitol and the hectic schedule. I mean everybody is running around from meeting to meeting and votes,” he said in an interview with The Fine Print. “But when it comes to the interaction between members, it’s a lot more collegial than I think is depicted there.”

But on the real-life battle over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which is set to run out of funding at midnight Friday unless Congress reaches a last-minute deal, Scalise described the current impasse as “disappointing.”

“We moved by the second week in January to get a bill passed out of the House that had a strong Republican vote that not only funded the Department of Homeland Security but also made it clear that the president doesn’t have the legal authority to go and issue some kind of executive amnesty on his own in the Oval Office,” Scalise said.

The bill passed by the House of Representatives proposed funding the Department of Homeland Security, while simultaneously halting the implementation of President Obama’s executive action on immigration. But Senate Democrats have effectively blocked that House bill from being considered.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently proposed passing a clean bill that would leave the president’s action on immigration out of the equation, Scalise said the Senate’s attempts at compromise are too little, too late.

“We’re not going to pass bad policy just because the Senate waits and waits until the midnight hour,” Scalise said. “If a kid just doesn’t do his homework and then just shows up and expects the teacher to give him a break, I mean, at some point everybody’s got responsibilities. “

Scalise also gave The Fine Print a tour of a rarely seen room on Capitol Hill that was once frequented by President Abraham Lincoln. Recently renamed by Scalise as the “Lincoln Room,” the room was actually the House cloakroom during Lincoln’s one term in Congress before the Civil War.

“When Abraham Lincoln was a member of the House, he actually sat right here in this spot, by this fireplace, and this is where he would read and tell stories and meet with members, because they didn’t have offices during those times in the 1840s,” Scalise said.

To hear more about Scalise’s thoughts on the fight over Homeland Security, and to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Lincoln Room, check out this episode of The Fine Print.

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