Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a move by Republicans to negotiate a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security with the House.
The motion failed 47-43, falling 13 votes short of the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster. The vote came after Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for what has become a weeks-long impasse over funding the department.
“Senate Democrats do not support going to conference because it will be counterproductive,” said Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “Republicans have no intention of using a conference to craft legislation that will pass both houses of Congress and prevent a shutdown of Homeland Security.”
The motion would have allowed the House and Senate to convene in a conference to negotiate a Senate-passed, $40 billion bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security until Sept. 30, which is the end of the fiscal year. Republicans want to put language in the bill that would curb at least Obama’s most recent immigration directive, issued in November, that provides millions of illegal immigrants with access to work permits and some federal benefits.
Republicans believe Obama’s immigration moves are unconstitutional and want to use congressional spending authority to defund his actions, but they appear to have run out of options to achieve that goal without leaving the the department unfunded.
The department runs out of funding Friday.
“The president’s overreach should not be a partisan issue,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said. “When one branch exceeds its authority, the other branches have an obligation to check that overreach.”
The move by Democrats to block the motion leaves the fate of the Senate-passed legislation in the hands of the House, where more than 50 conservatives oppose funding the department unless it curbs Obama’s immigration actions.
“The House has voted to go to conference and resolve the differences between the House and Senate bills,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the Washington Examiner. “That is the proper course of action under the Constitution, as Senate Democrats have said in the past.”
Conservatives blocked a House move Friday to temporarily fund the department for three weeks. Republican leaders were able to avert a Friday agency closure only with the help of House Democrats, who are now demanding a vote on the Sept. 30 funding measure.
Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have said they would not let Homeland Security funding run out.
Following the filibuster, Republicans joined Democrats to table the motion to go to conference.
A Reid spokesman, on Twitter, called the GOP votes to table the motion “a not-so-subtle message to Speaker Boehner.”
