Subject: POLITICO Huddle: DHS STALEMATE GOES LOCAL -- Dems write Boehner for clean bill, but does Rubio want one too? -- Oversight moves on S.S. -- Murkowski: Obama to Alaska
From: "POLITICO Huddle" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 06:27:59 -0600

By Burgess Everett (@burgessev or 
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THE WIDE VIEW -- CRs bad news for states and cities: The estimable David Rogers takes us outside the Beltway and inspects how the DHS stalemate is already affecting local governments due to continuing resolutions the department is running on. "Congress is most focused now on the threat of a shutdown next week if lawmakers cannot reach an agreement before DHS's stopgap continuing resolution runs out on Feb. 27. But lost in this discussion is how much the past five months have already disrupted the department's annual grant process, which is worth $1.6 billion to state and local governments writing their own budgets this summer. That's because a continuing resolution is just that: a temporary
 fix to 'continue' operations as they were before Oct. 1, the beginning of the current 2015 fiscal year. New grant applications for 2015 count as new starts, which are not authorized at this stage." 
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DEMS TO BOEHNER -- CLEAN IT UP: This morning House Democrats are sending House Speaker John Boehner a letter with 119 signatures that demands he put a clean DHS funding bill on the floor. Led by Reps. Ruben Gallego and Pete Aguilar, the Democrats spent nearly a week getting their members to ink the missive that urges the speaker to "provide certainty and stability to the frontline DHS personnel who protect our nation" and give up on the immigration riders. "The American people deserve better. When it comes to issues of national security, they expect us to set partisan politics aside and ensure that the government has the resources it needs." Check out the letter here, FIRST in Huddle: 
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RUBIO TAKES HEAT. BUT SHOULD HE HAVE? So what exactly happened with Marco Rubio yesterday? Did he join those House Democrats and call for a clean bill and "fold" as the Drudge Report claimed? Not quite, although he's certainly bearish on the Republican strategy. At a book signing in Las Vegas he admitted that tying immigration riders to the DHS funding bill probably won't work, but he never explicitly called for a clean spending bill a la Sen. Mark Kirk. "Look, I'm in favor of any measure that has a chance of succeeding that could stop the new order, but the truth of the matter is the president's not going to sign it and we don't have the votes to pass it in the Senate. We can't let
 Homeland Security shut down," he said, according to a transcript from his office. Check it out yourself: 
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Most skipped votes: Rubio also drew some hairy eyeballs when he skipped Senate votes to continue laying the groundwork for a possible presidential run earlier this year. Turns out that he's missed the most votes of any senator, on a list that's filled with Republicans who only just climbed out of the minority. Rep. John Conyers missed the most votes in the House. The takeaway here from the Vocativ study is that members are much more motivated to skip when they aren't in the majority, except for Sen. Susan Collins, who never missed any votes.
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OVERSIGHT MOVES QUICKLY ON SECRET SERVICE: Joseph Clancy is the new director of the Secret Service, and he's already got plenty of questions to answer. House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz and ranking member Elijah Cummings sent him a letter yesterday expressing concern "over the state of the agency" and requesting 15 years of financial documents and internal analysis of the department's mission as well as more than a dozen requests for more info. "Our goal is to identify and address deficiencies before there is another dangerous incident," they write in the letter, which you can read right here first: 
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BALLENGER DIES AT 88 - Longtime North Carolina Republican Cass Ballenger has died at the age of 88 after spending 18 years in Congress, focusing much of his energy on Central American policy. Charlotte Observer: "Ballenger had a ready laugh, a self-deprecating sense of humor and a candor rare even then in Washington. 'He was one of the few people who could hold someone accountable in the most blistering way, make him laugh, and help him out of a tight spot all in one conversation,' said his successor, Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry. 'He was a rare person.'" 
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A THURSDAY TO THAW AWAY. Welcome to the Huddle, your play-by-play guide to everything Capitol Chill, where things are quiet for just a few more days. Please send tips to 
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TODAY IN CONGRESS - Nada, except for a Senate pro forma session.

WEDNESDAY'S MOST-CLICKED LINK: The great Tarini Parti's story about Democrats' weak bench was the big winner.

RYAN'S GLOBAL PITCH: Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan is taking his trade pitch global today while in Tokyo, predicting that Trade Promotion Authority will clear Congress soon, per Reuters. ''We&#39;re very close, we&#39;re in the 11th hour of negotiating the final pieces of TPA,' Ryan ... told a news conference ahead of a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 'Once those negotiations are wrapped up we anticipate moving ... fairly quickly, and that&#39;s really this spring.'" This is just one more reason Republicans don't want to keep fighting on DHS -- a lot of them want to get onto other issues. 
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HAHN SO-LONG: In what is close to becoming a trend story with a headline like "Why These Members of Congress Are Running For Local Office," Rep. Janice Hahn has made it official that she's leaving the House and running for the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. Hahn has had some bipartisan success in Washington by focusing on ports issues, but she is going out with a swipe at the Capitol: "Washington is broken. It&#39;s increasingly mired in political gridlock, and there&#39;s virtually zero cooperation between the two parties ... That&#39;s not the kind of government I grew up with.... I can do more for the Los Angeles region on the Board of Supervisors.' LAT: 
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Life in the minority was not enough: She may have been able to stay in Washington for a while in her seat, having already done a lot of the hard work. She won a special election in 2011 and then throttled fellow Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson in 2012. She's hoping for more success than Gloria Negrete-McLeod, who left Congress last year and subsequently lost her race for San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.

MURKOWSKI SAYS OBAMA COMING TO ALASKA: In an address to the Alaska legislature, Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the president is coming to The Last Frontier in August and stepping off Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. "I have to assume that it will be more than a refueling stop," she said of the visit, which she learned about in a chat with her former Senate colleague John Kerry. ADN: 
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FINALLY GOOD NEWS FOR S.D. DEMS? Democrats may have landed a recruit in South Dakota to help them take back a House or Senate seat in the delegation -- though it won't be easy if Brendan Johnson does decide to run for Congress. The U.S. attorney and son of former Sen. Tim Johnson is stepping down from his job next month, which could allow him to seek federal office. Roll Call's Alexis Levinson chatted with him after the announcement, and he's not giving anything away: "My focus right now is exclusively on building a legal practice and anything different would likely require significant upsell with my wife." 
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OLDER AND BOLDER- This section is often a parade of people leaving Capitol Hill, but Drew Pusateri is coming back to work with Sen. Claire McCaskill on the Senate Aging Committee. He most recently worked for former Rep. Bruce Braley.

Across the Capitol: Rep. Roger Williams has recruited Vince Zito, a former staffer for Sen. Dan Coats, as his communications director.

THE REAL WASHINGTON: Roll Call's Bridget Bowman has a fun story about Hill staffers getting some information about the city that they work in, you know, beyond the Johnny's Half-Shell/Tortilla Coast perimeter. "Staffers perused the 72 tables advertising local restaurants, hotels, attractions and services as part of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton's annual 'Ask Me About D.C.' event. 'What I'm hoping they take away from this event is information to give their constituents beyond official Washington, to what we call the 'real Washington,' the Washington that has 650,000 people, the Washington beyond the Mall,'" Norton said. 
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Just one issue: The lunch served at the event was Chick fil A ... which only has D.C. locations on college campuses.

WEDNESDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Shira Center, a POLITICO alum, was the first to answer that Rep. Marcy Kaptur founded the Ukrainian Caucus and has made the most visits there.

TODAY'S TRIVIA - Shira has today's question: Which member of Congress recruited Susan Rice to join her gospel choir once upon a time? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day's Huddle. Email me at 
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