House GOP under building pressure to fund DHS
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has reached an agreement with Senate Democrats to pass a standalone bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) before the agency runs out of money on Friday. The legislation will not include the GOP's controversial provisions to interfere with President Obama's immigration policies.
Now that the Republican-led Senate has agreed to pass the "clean" funding bill, pressure is mounting for the Republican-led House of Representatives to follow suit. The GOP-led House has passed its own DHS funding bill, but Democrats strongly objected to its attempt to roll back Mr. Obama's executive actions on immigration.
"This isn't the time for games," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Wednesday. "If the House of Representatives led by Speaker Boehner is interested in doing a funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security, it has to be one that has no tricks, no riders. And if he sends something back that's vexatious with all these riders, anti-immigrant stuff, he won't be able to go to conference. He has to understand that."
Earlier Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, declined to say whether how the House would proceed if the Senate passed a clean DHS funding bill, without the immigration measures.
"Until I see what they're going to pass, no decision has been made on the House side," the speaker said.
The department will shut down at midnight on Friday if Congress fails to approving its funding.
Boehner blamed the Senate's Democratic minority for refusing to take up the GOP's initial bill. "Senate Democrats have stood in the way now for three weeks," he said.
Conservative members of the House GOP caucus suggested that a standalone DHS funding bill wouldn't pass in the lower chamber. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, said he thought a "substantial" number of House conservatives would oppose the Senate's plan.
Added Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Arizona, "Harry Reid's still running the Senate - that's a sad day."
House Democrats, meanwhile, slammed the GOP caucus for its continued insistence on tying immigration policy to the DHS bill.
"I do not mind them being dumb. I do mind them being dangerous," Rep. Steve Israel, D-New York, said. "And this manufactured crisis is dangerous. It weakens us and it undermines our security."
Also on Wednesday, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson convened a press conference with his Republican predecessors, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, to urge Republicans to pass the clean spending bill.
Ridge, who served as the first-ever homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush, said that he personally believes Mr. Obama has "gravely overstepped his constitutional authority" with his executive actions on immigration.
That said, he added that it's "folly" for the GOP to conflate the issue with DHS funding, noting that some homeland security employees would have to work without pay should the agency's funding expire.
"The Republican Party has every right to challenge that, but I don't think we right that wrong on the backs of the patriots" at DHS, he said. "We would no more ask the men and women in harms' way in Afghanistan or the 3,000 boots on the ground combatting ISIL to go out to provide safety and security... without pay."
Chertoff, who was DHS secretary from 2005 until 2009, chided the GOP for its decision to "hold the entire operations of homeland security in abeyance as a hostage" while members of Congress "play a game of chicken with the president."
Johnson, the current secretary, stressed, "There are concrete, dramatic consequences for the homeland security of this nation if we allow the funding of the department to lapse."
CBS News Producers Alicia Amling and Walt Cronkite contributed to this report.
