House Republicans voiced outrage at the Senate on Friday over a late-night deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security that excluded money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters, the latest sign that he and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) are not on the same page. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”
The Senate left for a two-week recess on Friday after passing the legislation, designed to overcome a monthlong impasse with Democrats over immigration enforcement. Under the plan, ICE would continue to stay afloat with money from President Donald Trump’s tax law and then receive another infusion later this year using a party-line budget process known as reconciliation.
But Johnson and House Republicans rejected the approach on Friday and announced they would be advancing an eight-week, short-term bill that funds all of the DHS instead.
Johnson didn’t go so far as to openly criticize Thune, saying he “wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer” of the deal, passed by voice vote at 2:30 a.m. Instead, he has argued Democrats have “forced this upon the Senate.”
A vote on the legislation, which would fund the agency until May 22, will happen as “soon as possible,” Johnson said.
Once passed by the House, it would place the burden to reopen the government back on the Senate, although Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already called Johnson’s bill “dead on arrival.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, said her panel would meet at 3:30 p.m. to discuss the eight-week bill, meaning the first procedural floor vote could come as early as Friday night. However, 11 GOP members were missing from votes on Friday morning, causing a possible attendance problem for Republican leadership.
A Senate GOP aide told the Washington Examiner that, given the “staunch opposition” from Senate Democrats, “the clearest path to ending this harmful shutdown is for the House to adopt what the Senate just overwhelmingly approved.”
In a statement, Schumer said, “We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical Homeland Security functions — but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms.”
Johnson held a lengthy, two-hour call with House Republicans on Friday afternoon to pitch the short-term funding bill, telling members that they cannot set a precedent of funding only some agencies at the request of the minority, a source on the call confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
The move is likely to appease the Freedom Caucus, after conservatives said they had three demands in exchange for their votes: funding for Border Patrol, funding for ICE’s child sex trafficking division, and voter ID language in the SAVE America Act.
Whether or not the funding patch will receive House Democratic approval remains to be seen. Much of the caucus, including top leaders, said they would support the deal passed by the Senate. But it is likely that any House GOP-led deal to fund all of the DHS, including immigration agencies, would make Democrats balk.
“In my eight years of doing this, I’ve never seen the Senate and the House on different pages like this,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) told the Washington Examiner.
Under House rules, bills cannot be put on the floor under “suspension” on Thursdays, Fridays, or the weekend. Suspension allows leadership to bypass the normal committee process and send legislation directly to the House floor, but passage requires two-thirds support within the chamber. That means Johnson would have to rely on Democratic votes.
Levin said he would be willing to help Johnson with a procedural vote to move forward with passing the Senate’s bill, but not the eight-week funding patch.
Though the short-term bill would likely appease conservatives, there was some pushback on Friday’s conference call from other GOP lawmakers, who said they are concerned about the optics of rejecting the Senate’s deal.
“I don’t believe a CR would be passed by the Senate,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) reportedly said. “It used to be their shutdown, but now it will be our shutdown.”
SENATE SENDS DHS BILL TO HOUSE WITHOUT ICE FUNDING
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) put it simply: “I’m just tired of the dysfunction.”
A House vote on final passage could come as soon as Saturday.
Lauren Green and David Sivak contributed to this report.