Senate Republican leaders announced Tuesday they have given up on trying to advance a House-passed Department of Homeland Security funding measure and are leaving the next move to their GOP counterparts across the Capitol.
But House Republicans say there is “little point” in any House action, and that the Senate GOP should keep trying to pass its measure, which faces crippling Democratic opposition.
House and Senate Republicans are at odds over how to resolve the DHS funding stalemate with just 17 days left until a temporary DHS spending measure expires, a timeframe that includes a week-long recess.
“I think clearly it’s stuck in the Senate,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday after a closed-door meeting with GOP lawmakers. “We can’t get on it, we can’t offer amendments to it and the next step is obviously up to the House.”
Senate Democrats have blocked three attempts to begin debate on the legislation, which funds the department at $40 billion until the end of the fiscal year. Democrats say they won’t vote for the measure because it includes language defunding President Obama’s recent executive actions to allow more than 5 million illegal immigrants work permits and access to some federal benefits.
The House passed the bill last month but it has stalled in the Senate, and the clock is running out on a temporary DHS funding measure that expires Feb. 27. While Republicans in the Senate control a majority of votes, they lack the 60 votes needed to block a Democratic filibuster.
House Republicans want Senate Republicans to put pressure on a group of seven Senate Democrats who have publicly opposed Obama’s executive actions but who keep voting to block the House bill.
“The House has passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and block the President’s unilateral executive action on immigration,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the Washington Examiner. “Now, the pressure is on Senate Democrats who claim to oppose the President’s action, but are filibustering a bill to stop it. Until there is some signal from those Senate Democrats that would break their filibuster, there’s little point in additional House action.”
Democrats, even though they are blocking the bill, are accusing the Republicans of putting politics before national security and stepping up pressure on the GOP to put forward legislation that excludes the provisions that defund Obama’s executive actions.
“There are 18 days until our national security is harmed,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, referring to the Feb. 27 expiration of the temporary DHS funding measure. “And still, Republicans haven’t come up with a way to stop holding hostage funding for DHS.”
While lawmakers have not talked publicly about a short-term measure, GOP leaders insist they were not going to allow DHS funding to expire on Feb. 27.
The pledge was repeated Tuesday by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas and other GOP leaders.
“I don’t know a Republican who doesn’t want to ensure that the DHS gets funding,” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said.
Some GOP aides said it was likely a short-term measure that excludes the immigration language will be drafted if the two parties can’t agree on a long-term deal by the end of the month.
Democrats won’t say whether they’ll try to block a stopgap bill, but Reid said such a measure, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, would not provide DHS with the increased funding levels for 2015 that it desperately needs for such improvements as upgrading biometric identification equipment.
“A CR is not good for protecting our homeland,” Reid said.
Some Republicans say they are open to supporting a plan put forward by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that would strip out part of the defunding language and leave in only the the ban on Obama’s most recent immigration directive, which he announced in November.
“We need to clean it up and move to Susan Collins’ approach,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.
But Democrats are insisting that Republicans strip out all of the language curbing Obama’s executive actions on immigration, not just some of it.
“Well let them take the blame for all of nothing,” Graham said when asked about the Democratic approach.” I think what they are doing is shameful.”
