House Republicans reject clean bill to open shut-down DHS agencies (March 28 update)
House Republicans (and three Democrats) rejected the Senate's clean bill to end the shutdown late Friday night. Instead, the House passed a different bill that fully funds every agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but for only 60 days with the knowledge that this short-term continuing resolution will not pass in the Senate.
Both chambers are out until April 13 so the shutdown is expected to last until then at least. Hope that no major weather disasters occur before then because FEMA is one of the DHS agencies out of commission (though some of its employees may be working without pay). It's possible that air travel security lines won't get worse since the President signed an Executive Order authorizing DHS to pay TSA workers. New DHS Secretary Mullin says paychecks will start to go out as early as Monday. How long can this approach continue? Unknown. Leaving aside the questionable legality of repurposing funds in this way, DHS may not be willing to keep paying TSA from these other funds long-term.
The Senate proposal to end the shutdown didn't contain specific rest-of-year funds for the immigration agencies ICE and CBP, or for that matter any of Democrats' prior demands for immigration enforcement reform. Congress gave ICE and CBP $75 billion dollars last year in the reconciliation bill, more than enough to carry the agencies for a few years without the specific yearly appropriation that House Republicans now demand, which is why those agencies aren't shut down but the rest of DHS, like TSA and CISA are. So it's unclear what House Republicans are really after other than appearances.
Instead, the impasse will drag on for no one knows how long.
Other legislative activity last week
This has been, measured by bills that passed, a highly productive week for Congress.
All of the bills listed on the House's Weekly Schedule for the week of March 23-27 passed. Many were by voice vote. You can see everything that got some kind of action this week at this variation of our Legislation Advanced Search. You want to look at the second column which tells you what happened (example: Passed House, Senate Next or vice versa) and the date.
None of the bills voted on by the House will become law until addressed by the Senate, but still, it's been a while since everything they intended to hold a vote on got a vote and even longer since they all passed.
The Senate's bill to fund DHS
Because we get our data from Congress and there's always a slight delay, the biggest item of the week, the Senate's bill for nearly complete funding of the Department of Homeland Security, isn't showing up yet on that Advanced Search (at least as of the morning of March 27).
But it did happen! At a little after 2am Eastern time on March 27, the Senate passed a funding bill that excludes ICE and parts of CBP by unanimous consent.
Unanimous consent is basically what it sounds like. No Democrat or Republican stood in the way of passing it.
The bill does not contain any of Democrats' prior demands for immigration enforcement reform.
This would not instantly resolve the massive lines at airports. Over 500 TSA agents are reported to have quit. So, even if all agents who've been calling in sick rather than work without pay come back, there's still going to be a shortage of TSA workers for some time.
The President announced yesterday that he would, by Executive Order, have TSA agents paid the paycheck they've missed. It's not clear if this is even legal.
It went to the House next where it was rejected, as noted at the top.
More coming on a major ethics violation
Programming note: we will be writing separately about yesterday's (March 26) Adjudicatory Hearing covering Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick's (D-FL20) ethics investigation.
The immediate effect is that the Ethics Committee says they believe she violated nearly all of the items listed in the Statement of Alleged Violations. They say they will decide on a recommendation for action to the full House when they return from the April recess.
Nope. Nevermind. Some DHS agencies still shut down. was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.
