The Senate remained deadlocked on Wednesday over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), after Republicans proposed legislation that would restart all of its operations with the exception of those involved in deportations, but exclude reforms that Democrats want.
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quickly shot down the offer, and said Democrats had countered with a measure that coupled DHS funding with a host of new guardrails on immigration enforcement operations – something the party has insisted on for months.
But that gained no traction with the GOP. “Get serious, folks,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said, in response to the Democrats’ counteroffer.
The standoff seems likely to prolong the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February after Democrats refused to approve funding for the department overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other agencies involved in Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, without reforms demanded in response to the deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.
The funding lapse has led to lengthy lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some major airports, including including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport and George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, prompting the president to this week deploy ICE agents in a bid to relieve congestion.
Schumer has sought to place the blame on Republicans for the travel chaos, saying its most recent proposal disrupted talks that had been nearing a compromise.
“We thought there had been some progress. Then Republicans sent us their offer yesterday, and it contained none of what we talked about, none of the reforms we had been discussing,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
“So if anyone is slowing down negotiation and hurting TSA workers, it is the Republican leadership, who did not include one single reform.”
The Republican proposal would restart funding to all of DHS with the exception of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, which plays a key role in deporting people from the United States. Democrats blocked the measure from proceeding on Wednesday afternoon in a largely party line vote, with Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman being the sole member of the minority to support it.
Earlier in the day, Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate budget committee, announced that Senate Republicans would begin work on a reconciliation bill, which could enact some of the Trump administration’s spending policies while avoiding a filibuster by Democratic senators.
Without providing details, he signaled that the bill could contain funding for the components of ICE left out of the funding negotiations, as well as for Trump’s military campaign against Iran. Portions of the Save America Act, which would impose a host of new identification requirements on voters registering and casting ballots, may also be included.
“The purpose of the second reconciliation bill is to make sure there is adequate funding to secure our homeland and to support our men and women in the military who are fighting so bravely,” Graham wrote on X.
“I also think we have many opportunities to improve voter integrity through reconciliation,” Graham wrote.
It remains unclear how much the Trump administration will seek to continue its hostilities against Iran. Democratic senator Tim Kaine, who attended a classified briefing held by administration officials on Wednesday, said that a figure of $200bn was discussed, but the Pentagon has yet to make a formal funding request.
A second reconciliation bill has been discussed for months in the Capitol, after Republicans last year used the procedure to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which funded Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, instituted an array of tax cuts and made major changes to eligibility for Medicaid.
The partial shutdown has not affected ICE’s involvement in Trump’s immigration crackdown, because the agency’s deportation operations received tens of billions of dollars in funding under the OBBBA.
The GOP is likely to face its own challenges in seeing through a second reconciliation bill. The party’s right wing, with Trump’s encouragement, has made passage of the Save America act a priority, but Democratic opposition means it has no pathway out of the Senate.
The Utah senator Mike Lee acknowledged that there was no way to get the measure passed under the reconciliation procedure, which requires bills address only spending, revenue and the debt limit.
“It’d be great [if] Save America fit within the rigid definition of ‘budgetary’ for purposes of budget reconciliation,” Lee wrote on X. “But it doesn’t.
“We need to keep debating SAVE America until it passes,” he added.
Meanwhile, Republican controls the House of Representatives by a mere one seat, with three seats vacant, allowing any objectors to Trump’s war with Iran to wield outsize power over the bill.
The GOP nonetheless sought to keep the pressure on Democrats, with the House homeland security committee on Wednesday convening a hearing to explore the impacts of the shutdown on the DHS and subagencies including the Coast Guard, TSA and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (Fema).
Ha Nguyen McNeill, the acting administrator of the TSA, said that her agency’s employees had missed $1bn in paychecks because of the shutdown.
“Many in our workforce have missed bill payments, received eviction notices, had their cars repossessed and utilities shut off, lost their childcare, defaulted on loans, damaged their credit line and drained their retirement savings,” she said.
“Some are sleeping in their cars, selling their blood and plasma and taking on second jobs to make ends meet.”
Before this most recent shutdown, only 4% of TSA employees would not report to work. Now, McNeill said that “multiple major airports are experiencing days where 40% to 50% of their staff are calling out” because they cannot afford to work without pay.
The Democratic ranking member on the House homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, meanwhile condemned Trump for sending ICE agents to airports, saying that the agents are not trained to do TSA’s job.
“We see images of ICE agents standing around or walking through terminals doing nothing to reduce the lines at security checkpoints, while TSA personnel continue to do their jobs without pay because Republicans refuse to vote for legislation to fund TSA,” Thompson said.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
