The House voted late Friday to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded with a one-week measure, averting a partial government closure slated to take place at midnight.
Both Republicans and Democrats voted for the legislation, which passed 357-60. The Senate voted by voice vote earlier in the evening to approve the one-week funding measure, which expires March 6, so the House action clears the bill for President Obama’s signature.
The move barely postpones a stalemate over funding the Homeland Department, which provides critical security programs including airport screening and border enforcement. It means the House and Senate will essentially be back fighting over the measure when they return on Monday.
The vote follows hours of drama in the House as GOP leaders earlier Friday failed to muster support for a three-week funding bill due to Democratic and conservative opposition.
When Republicans returned to the floor hours later, they came with a plan so brief it was endorsed by both Democrats and their far right faction.
GOP leaders said the House must pass a short-term extension because a stopgap bill funding Homeland Security runs out at midnight.
The one-week bill, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said, “allows us additional time to find a path forward,” on a long term deal.
Letting the Homeland spending expire, “is no way to govern the nation and the American people deserve better,” he added.
Earlier Friday, Republican leaders faced a significant backlash from their conservative faction, who rejected the three-week extension in favor of fighting for a spending bill that curbs President Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration. They told the Washington Examiner it made no sense to them to postpone the fight.
Conservatives told the Examiner they felt Republican leaders, under House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, created a crisis by not fighting harder to block Obama’s immigration directives during the debate over full government funding in December.
“This is the speaker’s strategy,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said of the three-week bill. “The conservatives are the ones who said take the entire [spending bill] and leverage it. This is his plan. He has to figure out how to make it work.”
Now that a one-week spending bill has cleared Congress, House GOP leaders will move to hold a conference with the Senate, which passed legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security until September 30. House Republicans hope to negotiate a deal that would add provisions to that bill that at least block Obama’s November immigration directive, which permits millions of illegal immigrants access to work permits and some federal benefits.
Senate Democrats, however, have vowed to block a conference on the bill.
