WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security won’t fully reopen anytime soon.
House GOP leadership doubled down Tuesday on insisting that it won’t move any piecemeal funding bill for DHS to end the record-breaking 66-day partial shutdown until it is sure that there’s a clear legislative path for all of its agencies to get money.
“The sequencing is important. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t isolate and, as I say, make an orphan out of key agencies of the department,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday.
“And there’s some concern on our side that if you do [fund] the bulk of the department first before that, then they could be left out. We can’t allow for that. So we’re working through that.”
Late last month, the Senate passed a deal to fund the entire department except for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
However, Johnson rejected the measure, calling it “unconscionable to me that the Democrats would force some sort of negotiation at 3 o’clock in the morning and try to foist this upon the American people and then get on their jets and go home for their holiday — and pretend and think that we’re going to go along with that.”
Senate Republicans are crafting a measure to fund CBP and ICE via a party-line reconciliation vote, a cumbersome process that will likely take weeks to complete.
On Tuesday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took the first major step by unveiling a resolution laying out a blueprint for the measure and instructions on how to proceed.
It calls on key committees to submit their recommendations for the reconciliation bill by May 15. Senate GOP leadership has been adamant that Republicans keep the bill as “skinny” — meaning narrowly tailored to fund ICE and CBP — as possible to avoid further delay.
Graham is aiming to spend $70 billion on the immigration enforcement agencies, but the blueprint technically allows for up to $140 billion in outlays.
While there are aspects of ICE and CBP that the Senate likely can’t fund via reconciliation, the Office of Management and Budget has teased plans for President Trump to use executive power to shift money around and make up for any shortfall.
Trump has given Republicans a June 1 deadline to complete the reconciliation process.
In the meantime, Trump has also used his executive power to pay key workers in DHS, including screeners at the Transportation Security Administration, for the time being.
But DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned Tuesday that those temporary measures will have been exhausted by May.
“My payroll through DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks, so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens, there is no emergency funds after that,” Mullin told “Fox & Friends.”
“I’ve got one payroll left and there is no more emergency funds, so the president can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money there.”
OMB Director Russ Vought has issued similar warnings about the state of DHS amid the temporary measures Trump has taken to keep it afloat.
“As of right now, the Department of Homeland Security is disintegrating because the secretary and I are having to figure out ways to temporarily fund people’s paychecks so we don’t have people quit and embark on new careers,” Vought testified to the Senate Budget Committee last week.
When pressed about those concerns, Johnson insisted he was in no mood to rush any bill through.
“We’ve got to make sure that the homeland is protected, and there’s been lots of consternation amongst lots of members about how this devolved,” the speaker argued. “It’s not the fault of the Republican Party, it’s the fault of the Democrats.”
