A senior Republican defended fellow House members who left Washington without voting on the Senate’s proposal to end the partial government shutdown on Friday.
Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Leader, told ABC’s This Week that he believed in the lower chamber’s strategy to pass a short-term funding package for DHS.
The House vote followed the Senate unanimously passing a bill that would fund the entirety of DHS minus enforcement and removal operations headed up by Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE) for the remainder of the fiscal year ending in September.
Now, House members and senators alike are back home after departing D.C. on Thursday and Friday for a recess that will continue through the Easter holiday next weekend, virtually guaranteeing that DHS, including TSA, which operates security at the nation’s ports and airports, will go unfunded for another week.
“We sent a bill that was short term. It’s not exactly what we want, but at least it allows everybody to get paid, all the agencies, TSA, while we negotiate our differences. We have very big differences,” Scalise told ABC’s Jonathan Karl.
Pressed on why Congress “flew the coop” while DHS remains unfunded — at a time when U.S. officials have warned about heightened security threats linked to the war in Iran — Scalise maintained that the House had stayed in session later than members had planned.
Co-anchor Johnathan Karl then pointed out that Republican leaders did not allow the Senate proposal to get a vote in the lower chamber. That’s despite President Donald Trump urging Republicans to remain on Capitol Hill to work through the recess on issues including DHS funding and the voter ID-focused Save America Act.
“Well, Congress — the House stayed later than we were scheduled to stay to take up a bill to fully fund the department, and sent it back over to the Senate,” Scalise said. “The Senate’s got options. They’ve got to come back and deal with it.”
Trump signed an order last week directing DHS to work with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ensure TSA agents received paychecks during the shutdown.
These latest developments in D.C. follow weeks of increasing airport delays that this past week spiralled in several major cities, such as Baltimore and Houston.
It’s not clear how long TSA agents will be able to be paid through alternative measures due to restrictions on congressionally authorized spending.
However, travelers will likely welcome any short-term relief at airports, where officials continue to warn Americans that staffing shortages may cause sudden and severe delays. One House Democrat called Trump’s order illegal on Sunday, suggesting that it could face court challenges.
Some airports reported TSA call-out rates as high as 40 percent last week.
Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over funding for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations.
Funding for those programs became incredibly unpopular on the left and with some Democratic-leaning independents after the shootings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by federal agents in Minneapolis as part of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge.
To break the stalemate, Democrats presented Republicans with a list of reforms to ICE that, if codified into law, would win enough votes to break a filibuster in the Senate.
Those suggested reforms include the demasking of ICE agents and the requirement that the agency obtain judicial warrants before conducting searches of Americans’ homes or other private property, a general requirement for all law enforcement.
Republicans have balked at several of the Democrats’ proposals, including on masks, and the agency has been in shutdown mode for more than a month as a result.
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