WASHINGTON — Days from a Homeland Security Department shutdown, Senate Republicans sought a way out Monday by splitting President Barack Obama’s contested immigration measures from the agency’s funding bill.
It was not clear whether the move by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would succeed ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline to fund the department or see it shut down. It was far from certain whether it would win any Democratic support, and House conservatives remain firmly opposed to any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department that does not also overturn Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
But with Senate Democrats united against a House-passed bill that funds the agency while blocking the president on immigration, McConnell said it was time for another approach.
“It’s another way to get the Senate unstuck from a Democrat filibuster and move the debate forward,” McConnell said on the Senate floor after a vote to advance the House-passed bill failed 47-46, short of the 60 votes needed. Three previous attempts in the month had yielded similar results.
“This is our colleagues’ chance to do exactly what they led their constituents to believe they’d do: defend the rule of law, without more excuses,” McConnell said in a jab at the handful of Senate Democrats who have voiced opposition to Obama’s executive actions offering work permits and deportation deferrals for millions in the country illegally.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, welcomed McConnell’s move, though without predicting its chances of success in the House: “This vote will highlight the irresponsible hypocrisy of any Senate Democrat who claims to oppose President Obama’s executive overreach on immigration but refuses to vote to stop it.”
McConnell left unclear whether a vote overturning Obama’s immigration moves would be followed by a stand-alone vote to fund the Homeland Security Department — an omission not lost on Senate Democrats.
“This proposal doesn’t bring us any closer to actually funding DHS, and Republicans still have no real plan to achieve that goal,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “It’s a disgrace that (the Islamic State) and al-Shabab are fully funded, but, thanks to Republican game-playing, the Department of Homeland Security might not be.”
