According to NBC, the House on Thursday approved a Senate-passed bill that would fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the record 75-day shutdown of the sprawling federal agency.
It doesn’t fund ICE.
President Donald Trump had urged lawmakers to pass the bill and vowed to sign it into law. It passed by a voice vote.
The bill will reopen DHS without providing new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection, as Democrats demand perverse changes to immigration enforcement.
Both ICE and border enforcement had funding during the shutdown, and Republicans will attempt in the coming weeks to keep them funded for the rest of Trump’s term.
Conservatives had held out for weeks but admitted they had no leverage left in the fight.
In this way, Democrats get back the extra funds planned for ICE’s increased enforcement plans.
It’s “Assinine”
Now, Republicans will seek to fund immigration enforcement without Democratic votes, using a complex budgetary maneuver. (Republicans separately funded ICE through the same process last year, which eliminates any immediate need for the money.)
The move to mostly reopen DHS comes after weeks of drama on Capitol Hill, with Republicans ultimately choosing not to take a recorded vote on the measure that has sharply divided their party.
Some House Republicans had been adamant that House GOP leaders should not cave, though leadership argued that their members had taken a key step a day earlier toward unlocking immigration-enforcement funds, which would pave the way to end the funding impasse over the rest of DHS. They had also criticized the Senate GOP for passing it by voice vote — a move that the House eventually followed.
“I think it’s asinine that we’re funding the government this way,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said just before the vote about the funding strategy.
But afterward, Roy and other ultraconservatives said they didn’t place the blame on House GOP leadership—and, in some cases, defended Johnson.
Filibuster Over Constitution
Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a senior spending leader who rarely picks fights with his own party, was firm that the House should not allow Senate Democrats to decide simply not to fund one piece of a department outside of the annual spending process.
“The Senate is more concerned about preserving the filibuster than they are about preserving the Constitution. The filibuster is not in the Constitution. The appropriations bills are,” he said, also noting that it is “really, really dangerous” that DHS remains shut down.