Homeland Security funding on the brink
Top Republicans are increasingly unworried about missing the Department of Homeland Securityâs funding deadline. The Feb. 27 deadline was supposed to mark the next stage in Congressâ fight on President Barack Obamaâs immigration policies, but now, leading Republicans say the fallout would be limited if Congress fails to act. In private conversations and in meetings around the Capitol and on the House floor, top House GOP figures say most of DHSâs 280,000 employees will stay on the job even without a new funding bill because they are considered essential employees â though their paychecks would stop coming in the meantime. Story Continued Below Thatâs not the House Republican leadershipâs goal â they passed their own bill this month. But that line of thinking â discussed privately by multiple lawmakers and aides â illustrates how the debate over Homeland Security funding is beginning to look like an awfully familiar crisis, filled with distrust, sniping, and the same kind of back and forth that has dominated GOP governance for the past few years. This isnât how this immigration fight was supposed to unfold. When House Republican leaders decided to put DHS on a short funding leash in December, they were betting that even their unpredictable and restless rank and file would blink when it came to national security. With emboldened majorities on Capitol Hill, Republicans planned to put up a fight to gut President Barack Obamaâs executive actions, but many of them vowed they would not allow the departmentâs funding to lapse at the end of February. The House has passed its bill, with language aimed at gutting Obamaâs policies â language that wonât make it into the Senateâs version. Even as the Senate gears up to pass its bill, the path forward seems very murky. Senior sources in House Republican leadership are now saying they will not bring up a so-called âcleanâ DHS funding bill. They hope the Senate can insert some language to change part of Obamaâs executive actions on immigration and are privately warning that a âclean bill will not fly in the House,â as one senior leadership aide put it. Several GOP aides said they were hoping the White House intervenes soon and accepts some changes to Obamaâs immigration actions to avoid a showdown. And, illustrating the flux and uncertainty within the House Republican Conference, the border security bill that the House was slated to bring up this week could now be delayed until sometime in late February or March or later this year â a victim of the distrust that the some of the conservative rank and file feel toward leadership. That bill, penned by House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas), was meant to quell conservative concerns about the border â but now, many Republicans view it as a back-door way to enact immigration reform and are rejecting attempts to bring it to the floor until well after DHS is funded. In other words, Republicans are rejecting the piecemeal immigration reform they once clamored for. âI donât want to do the vote until after Feb. 27,â said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), who says he opposes the border bill. âI donât want to be some bargaining chip on something that I believe needs to be dealt with by the Senate first.â Now, to quiet concerns from some corners that Republicans arenât doing enough to challenge the White House, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is beginning to talk about suing the Obama administration over the presidentâs executive actions on immigration. Next week, the House is moving onto more comfortable ground: legislation dealing with regulatory flexibility and a measure to defund Obamacare. This isnât what Republican control was supposed to look like. When Republicans were on the precipice of power, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said they would end the legislative cliffhangers that have come to dominate Washington. Instead, theyâre heading into one. Of course, the debate isnât over. The House has done its part on DHS funding, and the Senate still has to produce a bill of its own. But what the Senate will do â and whether the House can accept it â is in doubt. Senate Democrats released a letter Tuesday calling for a so-called âcleanâ Homeland Security bill, a united front that would strip Republicans of the votes they would need to advance a funding measure that includes attacks on Obamaâs immigration policies. Not even the Republican leadership is entirely sure what the Senate will do. Some GOP sources said Tuesday that they expect Senate Republicans to release a funding bill that includes some modest change to immigration policy. One idea thatâs been discussed is attaching language to beef up immigration enforcement and detention in local communities. Lessening the urgency, in some minds, of passing a Homeland Security funding bill is the fact that DHSâs operations wouldnât necessarily shut down if funding expires after Feb. 27. In the October 2013 federal government shutdown, roughly 85 percent of DHS employees continued to work because their jobs were considered essential. However, their paychecks were withheld until the shutdown was over. âIn other words, itâs not the end of the world if we get to that time because the national security functions will not stop â whether itâs border security or a lot of other issues,â Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said, though he stressed that Congress shouldnât ignore that deadline. âHaving said so, I think we should always aspire to try to get it done.â Blowing past the deadline would raise ire among national security hawks, who want DHS funding restored immediately, especially given the recent violence in Paris. The internal rifts that are surfacing over immigration have been building since the beginning inside the House Republican conference. Earlier this month, more than two dozen House Republicans defected from the rest of their party to oppose a measure that would kill a 2012 Obama administration initiative for young undocumented immigrants â which would effectively leave more than 600,000 so-called Dreamers open to deportation. The Republicans who theorize the House is moving forward on piecemeal immigration reform might be onto something. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said in a brief interview Tuesday that his committee is âworking on all the bills that we did last Congress,â which would include interior enforcement, E-Verify, a program for agriculture workers and a separate program for high-skilled workers. This mess has many Republican lawmakers shaking their heads, and more red-faced with anger. Republicans like Salmon think the Senate should âcome up with creative ideas to do the jobâ if they cannot pass the House bill. And Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), a supporter of immigration reform, said bluntly, âWe are not going to miss our deadline.â He called the situation âfrustratingâ and said it makes it âdifficult to move on to the next issue when you canât deal with the deadline in front of you.â