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News > World

Department of Homeland Security May Shut Down at Midnight

  • U.S. House Majority Whip Representative Steve Scalise (C) and Representative Kevin Brady (L) before votes on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 27, 2015.

    U.S. House Majority Whip Representative Steve Scalise (C) and Representative Kevin Brady (L) before votes on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 27, 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 27 February 2015
Opinion

House Republicans voted down the new DHS funding bill, which included measures to curtail Obama’s executive action on immigration.

[UPDATED:] A midnight shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is likely after the House of Representatives voted down a funding bill that would keep the DHS fully-funded for another three weeks.

Republicans wanted to use the lower chamber’s veto power to block a Senate bill passed today on the grounds that it would push through some of President Barack Obama’s immigration changes.

Two votes took place Friday in the upper and lower chambers of the U.S. Congress. Friday night’s vote in the House was for a three-week stopgap funding for the DHS, which was voted down 203-224.

Huffington Post reports that Friday evening’s failure to pass temporary funding is an embarassment for both parties. Republican leaders wanted to push the bill through as it would have given their party time to push for changes to the longer-term funding bill, which the Senate passed Friday morning. Meanwhile some House Democrats voted against the temporary funding bill as they thought it would force Republicans to pass the longer-term bill. 

The U.S. Senate had repeatedly rejected passing a Republican-proposed funding bill for the DHS that had included restrictions on Obama’s executive action on immigration. However, on Friday the U.S. Senate passed a US$39.7 billion clean version of the bill 68-31, which does not curtail immigration reform and would keep the DHS operating through September.

Also see: Immigration Reform in the Age of Obama 

The anti-immigration faction of the Republicans want to ensure the defunding of Obama's November order, which would remove the threat of deportation that hovers over the country’s 4.7 million undocumented residents, who are mainly from Mexico and Central America. Obama's immigration action has been temporarily put on hold by a federal judge.

The DHS funding is the first fiscal measure to test the new, Republican-controlled Congress that was sworn in at the beginning of the year.

“Even though Republicans comfortably control the House and have a narrow advantage over Democrats in the Senate, intra-party disagreements have made for a chaotic two months, with the prospect of a partial government shutdown looming over Washington,” reported Reuters. 

Lawmakers reactions

"The House leadership has chosen yet another punt," said New York Representative Nita Lowey, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. She called the stopgap bill a plan to "string this mess out even further."

Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin said Republicans were driven by a personal dislike of Obama, saying that, "Virtually every president since Eisenhower has issued an executive order relative to immigration. Now, you didn't see Republican hair on fire when it was being done by President George W. Bush or Herbert Walker Bush or any other Republican president. It's only when Barack Obama does it that they scream and rage that it's unconstitutional."

Texas federal judge Andrew Hanen temporarily blocked President Obama's executive action on undocumented immigration Monday in response to 26 states who had filed opposition to the presidential action.

And last week, the U.S. Justice Department requested an emergency stay to hold the Texas judge’s decision that temporarily blocked President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration reform. 

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