President Donald Trump’s budget workplace despatched a memo to Capitol Hill on Tuesday night urging House Republicans to agree to partly reopen the Department of Homeland Security – even with out new money for immigration enforcement.
The existence of the memo, which was confirmed by an individual aware of its contents, might quantity to a significant growth in the monthslong impasse round DHS funding.
Trump officials at the moment are telling House Republicans to settle for a compromise measure from the Senate, which doesn’t embody cash for ICE or border patrol, to be sure that staff don’t go unpaid. Many House Republicans have to this point refused to cross any DHS funding with out concurrently approving one other funding invoice for ICE.
The strain from the White House comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to say whether or not he’ll put that partial, Senate-passed DHS funding invoice on the ground this week earlier than the House leaves for a weeklong recess.
The speaker informed NCS on Monday that laws has “some problematic language because it was haphazardly drafted,” indicating House Republicans need technical adjustments to the bundle.
Resolving the 73-day shutdown – already the longest in historical past – has proved a steep activity for Johnson, and the problem has additional divided his already fractious House GOP.
The get together is bitterly break up with conservatives livid that Senate Majority Leader John Thune agreed to Democratic calls for to solely partially fund the division. In response, House Republicans are scrambling to cross a separate – and legislatively advanced – bundle centered on funding immigration enforcement and border patrol with out Democratic assist.
Johnson beforehand indicated that he wouldn’t take up the partial DHS funding invoice till House Republicans take a separate vote teeing up that sophisticated course of, generally known as budget reconciliation, which is predicted to take weeks.
The memo from the budget workplace, which Punchbowl News first reported, comes because the delay in funding has raised issues with a number of the GOP’s nationwide safety hawks, who fear that the Department of Homeland Security will out of cash inside days. (The White House had briefly paid some key workers, together with the Transportation Security Administration, utilizing a wet day fund, however that’s nearly dry.)
Those Republicans have warned that the House wants to act on the Senate-passed invoice as quickly as attainable – and definitely earlier than the chamber leaves subsequent week for recess.
But even when Johnson had been to deliver the invoice to the ground, it might nonetheless face steep odds.
A senior House Republican informed NCS on Tuesday that the votes merely don’t exist to partly finish the DHS shutdown this week with out having cash “in hand” for federal immigration enforcement.
“No one is going to vote to fund Homeland without money for ICE and CBP,” mentioned Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, who leads the House Budget Committee.
The remarks from Arrington — a retiring Republican who’s revered among the many get together’s ultraconservative wing — signify the huge highway block that Congress is dealing with to finish the shutdown.