Dick Durbin: Senate Democrats will block House DHS bill
The Senateâs second-ranking Democrat said Friday that his party will block a funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security set for a vote next week that guts President Barack Obamaâs executive actions on immigration. Earlier Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) teed up a procedural vote on the funding bill, which the House passed earlier this month. But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirmed that Senate Democrats, who have called for a funding bill free of immigration riders, will vote against advancing the measure. Story Continued Below âWe support a clean appropriations bill, and we should do it sooner rather than later,â Durbin said on a conference call organized by Americaâs Voice, an immigration advocacy group. The procedural vote is set for 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Current DHS funding runs through Feb. 27. The Republican-led House cleared a package that would keep DHS funded through the end of the fiscal year but rolls back years of the Obama administrationâs policies on immigration â including the latest actions announced in November that could shield nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported, while granting them work permits. The House legislation also would gut a 2012 administrative initiative that has already offered those same protections to some 600,000 immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. âThe House-passed bill weâll consider would do two things: Fund the Department of Homeland Security and rein in executive overreach. Thatâs it,â McConnell said Friday morning. âItâs simple, and thereâs no reason for Democrats to block it.â Congressional Democrats have protested the GOPâs efforts to kill Obamaâs actions through must-pass funding. Durbin, a longtime advocate of legislation that would give a pathway to citizenship to so-called DREAMers, called the efforts to block deportation protections to them âmindless and cruel.â âWe are united as a caucus, and we are going to work to stop this strategy that hurts young people,â Durbin said.