House Republicans will meet at 5 p.m. Thursday to discuss what to do next about funding the Homeland Security department before a Feb. 27 deadline.
Republicans are preparing short-term measures to keep Homeland Security funded, and have also readied a spending bill that would not expire until Sept. 30.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said he prefers a long-term measure but is prepared to put forward a shorter bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR.
“We are prepared to do that,” Rogers said of the CR proposal. “We can do a CR rapidly to give more time for talks to take place.”
Conservatives told the Washington Examiner they’d likely vote against a short term measure. They hope that waiting will increase pressure on Democrats.
“It’s a matter of resolve,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said.
But conservative opposition won’t block passage if GOP leaders put a short term bill on the floor.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who has promised to avoid letting the department’s funding expire, can count on bipartisan support to pass the measure in the House, which means he can afford to lose conservatives, because Democrats will vote for it.
In the Senate, lawmakers are debating the House-passed, $40 billion Homeland Security measure.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a deal with Democrats, will allow an amendment to strip out language that would curb President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. He’ll allow debate on a second amendment that would block only Obama’s most recent directive shielding millions of people from deportation.
Boehner told reporters he’s waiting for the Senate to act, but leadership aides have said a short-term funding measure is likely this week.
In the Senate, meanwhile, lawmakers debated Obama’s executive actions on immigration in earnest.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, promoted her measure, which would stop Obama from implementing the most recent immigration order but leave in place a 2012 executive action that allows access to work permits and federal benefits for many young people who came here as children.
Collins said she mostly approves of the 2012 executive action but not the one made in 2014, which she said exceeds the president’s constitutional authority.
“That is really what this debate is about,” Collins said. “It is about the proper constitutional constraints on unilateral executive action.”
