The Senate’s top Republican was trying to build support Tuesday for a new plan to avert a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday, but it was unclear whether Democrats and rank-and-file GOP lawmakers would support it.
DHS is scheduled to begin furloughing nonessential workers if Congress fails to approve a funding extension for its $40 billion budget by Friday. The Senate has been unable to pass a measure, approved by the House, to extend the agency’s funding through the fiscal year that would also repeal President Obama’s executive actions on immigration in November.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) began the Senate’s business day with an intensified effort to split off the immigration issue into a separate bill, which would also give the president’s GOP critics an opportunity to express their displeasure with the White House. McConnell’s hope is that after a vote on his new bill later this week, the chamber would then take a separate vote on a “clean” DHS funding measure. He said it was an option he chose reluctantly.
“My preference remains with the legislation that’s already passed the House,” said McConnell. “It’s still the simplest way forward. But as long as Democrats continue to prevent us from even debating that bill, I’m ready to try another way.”
But he encountered immediate resistance from Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who demanded a vote on a clean DHS funding bill before any debate on Obama’s immigration actions.
“We’ve said it not once, not twice; we’ve said it many different times,” declared Reid, who spoke on the Senate floor after McConnell.
At the White House Obama prepared to inject himself more forcefully into the debate with a town-hall style forum planned for Wednesday in Miami, which has a heavily Latino population. The president is expected to address the funding standoff with DHS and the administration’s appeal of a federal judge’s decision last week to temporarily block Obama’s program to defer deportations for illegal immigrants while a lawsuit against it from 26 states is decided.
As they rally the public, however, Obama and his aides have been limited in their dealings with Capitol Hill. White House aides and Democratic aides in Congress said there is little the president can do because he will not undo his immigration actions and it is up to Republicans to decide if they are willing to shut down DHS over the issue.
“This is not a battle with the White House. This is a battle taking place on Capitol Hill,” a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “Legislators on the Hill need to work on this. ... What you’re going to see from the administration on DHS is up until Friday continuing to call attention publicly to the potential impact of shutting down DHS.”
To that end, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson and two predecessors from the George W. Bush administration — Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge — will attend a news conference scheduled for Wednesday to warn of potential problems if the agency is forced to begin furloughs.
Essential personal, as many as 200,000 employees, will continue to report to work without pay during a partial shutdown. Though Johnson and the White House have said that national security will not be jeopardized, they have warned that long-term planning could be affected, as support and administrative personnel will be furloughed.
In an interview, Chertoff warned of morale problems in the agency and said he believes a shutdown would “no doubt adversely affect the nation’s security.”
“A couple days of delay [of pay] will not make a difference, but if it starts to mount up and there’s real uncertainty, people will start to feel demoralized, and that cold have an impact over a long period,” Chertoff said. “You wouldn’t do this to [military] troops in the field, send them into combat but not get paid. They need to take this seriously.”
Senate Republicans have called on Democrats to allow a vote on the House-approved DHS funding bill, but Democrats have continued to filibuster while the immigration issue is attached to the bill.
Meanwhile, hard-line conservatives have greeted McConnell’s plan to split off the immigration issue into a separate, stand-alone measure skeptically.
“Senators arguing fund DHS but vote a separate bill to defund executive amnesty. Have you heard of Obama veto? Think we were born yesterday?” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a staunch opponent of Obama’s immigration actions, wrote on Twitter.
The administration has struggled to explain how a partial shutdown would affect national security. White House press secretary Josh Earnest, asked repeatedly about it on Monday, declined to say that the nation would be more at risk; rather, he said the situation would not improve the nation’s safety.
“It’s hard to imagine a good time for Congress to be mucking around with the funding of the Department of Homeland Security,” Earnest said. “But now seems like a particularly bad one.”
Politically, however, the standoff could help the White House and Democrats with public opinion. Republicans drew the brunt of public anger over a partial government shutdown in October 2013 that lasted more than two weeks, and administration aides believe the same would happen if DHS is affected at week’s end.
It is not lost on White House allies that the president is traveling to Florida, a key swing state in presidential races, to hold his rally Wednesday.
“In our travels to the immigrant community, the faith community, the law enforcement community and the business community, they want someone in D.C. to do something,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “The president has done something. The political risk to the administration is only there if they stop doing something. Right now, it’s on Republicans to kind of meet the bar.”
Senior administration officials are scheduled to appear at another immigration forum, hosted by Univision, on Sunday in Los Angeles, which has the largest number of immigrants potentially eligible for deportation relief under Obama’s executive actions.
“For the first time in a long time the immigrant community and advocates are very aligned with the White House,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “I think the fact that he’s coming to Miami to meet with immigrant community members and take questions directly from folks speaks volumes.”
David Nakamura covers the White House. He has previously covered sports, education and city government and reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Japan.
Sean Sullivan has covered national politics for The Washington Post since 2012.
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