Lawmakers made no apparent progress toward a deal Wednesday on an extension of Department of Homeland Security funding, and the Senate appears set to leave town Thursday despite the Feb. 13 deadline to avoid a partial shutdown of that agency
With both chambers on recess next week, the impasse means the department might be without a big chunk of its funding until at least the week of Feb. 23, unless there’s a breakthrough or leadership calls members back to Washington early.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday that he wasn’t planning on keeping his chamber in town unless an agreement was close.
“As soon as we can strike a deal, we’ll vote on it,” he said. “Until then, I don’t know if there is any point in keeping people around here, sitting around doing nothing. I think it’s important that the people at the negotiating table double down, sharpen their pencils and strike a deal.”
The White House is leading the negotiations with Democrats, who have made clear they will not vote for another stopgap extension of DHS funding without progress on an immigration enforcement deal that has not yet materialized.
“If they don’t propose something that’s strong, that reins in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], that ends the killing, don’t expect our votes,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters leaving the Capitol on Wednesday. He also said Republicans have yet to provide legislative text.
But with a continuing resolution the only alternative to a shutdown if they can’t reach a full-year deal in time, Republicans appear resigned to giving a CR a try.
“It doesn’t look like we’re going to stick the landing by tomorrow, so time to go to plan B again,” Thune said after leaving votes Wednesday night.
‘Good-faith negotiations’
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he met with President Donald Trump at the White House on the topic Wednesday night, and that the administration was working mainly with Senate Democrats. He seemed slightly more optimistic than Thune, and said his chamber would remain in session Friday to take up DHS funding.
There are “good-faith negotiations going on right now,” Johnson said. “We’re very hopeful that that could be worked out.”
He said he hoped the Senate could pass a short-term stopgap measure if they can’t get 60 votes for a full-year DHS agreement.
“We don’t know yet how that’s going to shake out, but I did tell the House Republicans, I put everybody on notice that I would anticipate votes on Friday,” Johnson said Wednesday night. “I certainly hope that’s true, because shutting down the government right now … will be a disaster for the country.”
Most federal agencies have their full-year funding thanks to enactment of three other major spending packages. So the impact will be far less severe than under the 43-day shutdown that lasted into November. And even within DHS, the impact will be blunted at the immigration enforcement agencies Democrats are seeking to defund.
[House lawmakers spar over potential harms of DHS shutdown]
Immigration enforcement “will largely not be affected by a shutdown” because ICE and Customs and Border Protection received about $75 billion in last year’s budget reconciliation law, House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said at a Wednesday subcommittee hearing.
The effects would be greater at the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Coast Guard, as representatives from those agencies testified.
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., introduced a bill Wednesday that would fund every agency covered under the Homeland Security bill except ICE and CBP.
“The Republicans want to continue to defend a rogue, lawless agency that is terrorizing people,” DeLauro said. “That’s going to be a long negotiation, we shouldn’t hold these other agencies hostage”
But the idea was quickly dismissed by Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who posted “not happening” on X in response to DeLauro’s proposal.
Now, time is running short, and lawmakers appear poised to let funding lapse for the department.
Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats but voted last year to reopen the government, confirmed to reporters Wednesday that he’d vote against a CR and called Republicans’ response so far “insulting.”
On Tuesday evening, Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the full-year, House-passed Homeland Security appropriations bill, which would serve as a vehicle for a short-term CR. Unless an agreement is reached, a preliminary procedural vote on taking up the stopgap measure would occur on Thursday morning.
‘Work in progress’
“We will vote on the House-passed version for sure,” Thune said. “There will [probably] be an attempt, some attempt, to fund the government for some foreseeable time in the future. What exactly that looks like is still a work in progress.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a senior appropriator, said four weeks should be sufficient.
“We’re trying to figure out a clean CR,” Mullin said. “They haven’t given back a rebuttal on it yet.”
He said with a large Senate delegation expected to leave for the Munich Security Conference, which runs Friday through Sunday, there was a chance that jet fumes could fuel a stopgap deal on Thursday.
“I will assume tomorrow, considering that 30 of them are going to Munich and we say, ‘No, we’re staying here,’ I imagine cooler heads will prevail at some point,” Mullin said.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Wednesday that he thinks the extension should be four to six weeks to allow plenty of time for negotiations.
He also questioned why the Senate would close up shop for the weekend starting Thursday, saying it would be “unconscionable” for lawmakers to leave town without addressing DHS funding.
“I’m sure Munich is a great place,” Cole said. “I’ve been there many times. The beer is outstanding, but we don’t need to go to a defense conference someplace in Europe when we’re not taking care of the defense of the United States of America.”
Nina Heller, Jacob Fulton and Chris Johnson contributed to this report.
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