House Republicans are balking, once again, at a GOP plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
Dozens of members aired objections to a proposed two-step process backed by President Donald Trump in a lengthy private call Thursday afternoon, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the conversation.
Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders made a case for a bill funding most of the department — one they bitterly opposed as recently as this past weekend — leaving key immigration enforcement agencies for the party-line budget reconciliation process.
But several members on the call said they would oppose a bill that Johnson had publicly called a “joke” after it initially passed the Senate last week, with some reiterating they did not want to vote for a package that omits Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol funding.
Many pushed for the enforcement funding bill to at least start moving through the House before passing the larger DHS bill. One member on the call told POLITICO the House should not fund the bulk of the department until the Senate passes the enforcement spending.
“This is pretty pathetic,” the member said. “It’s taking a step back.”
The call came hours after the Senate acted to put the two-track plan into motion, sending the bill funding most of the DHS back to the House early Thursday morning.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s maneuver, undertaken without objection in a mostly empty chamber just after 7 a.m., came less than a day after Trump effectivelyendorsed what had been Thune’s strategy all along for DHS: funding most of it through abipartisan deal with Democrats then using reconciliation to plow cash into immigration enforcement.
Now the bipartisan funding measure is back in the House for a redo less than a week after conservatives balked the first time at separating out enforcement funding. And it could be nearly two more weeks before they take a vote on it.
GOP leaders currently have no plans to bring members back to Washington earlier than their scheduled April 14 return from a two-week spring recess. With some of his members resisting the deal, Johnson will likely have to rely on the votes of House Democrats to get the DHS funding bill to Trump’s desk.
While members have been under pressure to deliver paychecks to DHS workers who have been furloughed or working without pay since Feb. 14, the pressure to act has been eased by Trump, who moved last week to pay airport security officers and announced Thursday he would pay other DHS employees as the legislation moves across Capitol Hill.
“Republicans are UNIFIED, and moving forward on a plan that will reload funding for our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers,” the president wrote Thursday. “I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security.”
The separate party-line track for ICE and Border Patrol funding emerged after Republicans and Senate Democrats could not agree, despite weeks of negotiations, on any new immigration enforcement restrictions in the wake of federal agents killing two people in Minneapolis in January.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune landed on the two-step approach as the best possible option last week, then watched it implode in the House after the Senate initially passed the bigger bill on a voice vote early Friday morning.
Asked Thursday how he revived the deal, Thune said, “You … have to just continue to define reality for people, what’s achievable in the Senate, what we can get done.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Thursday that House Republicans needed to act immediately to approve the bipartisan deal.
“The deep division and dysfunction among House Republicans is needlessly extending the DHS shutdown and hurting federal workers who are missing another paycheck,” he said, calling on them to “get to work and end the longest Republican shutdown in history.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who attended a brief House session Thursday, told reporters he is pleased to see Republicans coalescing around the Senate-approved plan.
Asked if House Republicans “caved,” Beyer said, “I’d rather say that they saw the wisdom of what was sent to them.”
House Democrats are slated to meet Monday evening to discuss DHS funding and other matters.
Even once both chambers clear the Senate bill, they will face a tight timeline for the second part of the Trump-blessed plan, delivering an immigration enforcement bill to his desk by June 1.
The Senate is expected to move first to approve a budget resolution that will unlock the GOP-only immigration bill, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private strategy, and could adopt the fiscal blueprint for the final bill by the end of the month.
Thune said Thursday he has already had conversations with Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) about how to move as quickly as possible.
“Our theory of the case behind all this was to keep that thing as narrow and focused as possible, and that maximizes, I think, the speed at which we can do it and the support for it,” he said.