BY ALEXANDER BOLTON
Negotiators reached a deal Monday evening on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, a key piece of the puzzle to get an agreement on a government funding package and avoid a partial government shutdown, according to a source familiar with the talks.
But congressional staff still need to finalize the legislative text of the six-bill package, which would also fund the Departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, State and other priorities.
The leaves congressional leaders precious little time to get the massive bill passed through the House and the Senate and onto President Biden’s desk before funding for a huge swath of the federal government expires at 11:59 p.m. Friday.
Senate and House appropriators had eyed splitting off the controversial Homeland Security piece from the rest of the six-bill appropriations package, but White House negotiators made it clear Saturday that they opposed that option, according to sources familiar with the talks.
The White House wanted to keep funding for the departments of Homeland Security and Defense connected to maintain leverage over Republicans as it tries to secure the funding and flexibility President Biden needs to manage the border, say people familiar with the talks.
An estimated 1.3 million active-duty service members wouldn’t receive pay checks if Congress fails to extend funding for the Defense Department beyond this week.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had come under pressure from members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to add tough border security reforms to the spending package, including proposals that are non-starters with Democrats.
Reps. Bob Good (R-Va.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) warned in a “Dear Colleague” letter signed by more than 40 House Republicans Monday that funding the Homeland Security Department without adding “the core elements” of H.R. 2, the House-passed Secure the Border Act, would “directly fund” Biden’s “disastrous policies.”
“From DHS’s abuse of laws to ‘release’ under parole and asylum, to the United Nations and [nongovernmental organizations] facilitating the trafficking of humans — the abuse can be checked if the House of Representatives exercises its constitutional duty,” they wrote.
Johnson is expected to put any funding legislation that needs to pass Congress on the suspension calendar, where it would need a two-thirds majority vote to pass, to get around divisions within his own conference. In this scenario, he would need a large number of Democratic votes to pass it.
House conservatives have previously blocked rules for considering spending bills under regular order.
Congressional aides said Monday they did not expect legislative text of the funding package to be made public before Tuesday, raising the specter that Congress could blunder into a partial shutdown over the weekend.
Now lawmakers are mulling a short-term stopgap measure to keep federal departments operating into next week. This would give them time to review any legislation that may emerge this week. House Republicans adopted a rules package at the start of the 118th Congress that requires bills to be made public at least 72 hours before a floor vote.
“They’re extremely close or done with five of them and the final one is Homeland and the White House came in over with the weekend with last-minute changes and gummed up the process,” said one Republican source familiar with the talks before the agreement announced Monday evening.
The GOP source said the White House had made new requests over related to “border management” that appeared to put any deal in jeopardy.
“I think we’re going to go right up to the line on this and maybe have a technical shutdown,” the source warned. “Maybe they’ll get it done in time, we’ll see.”
Republican aides say that the Speaker has made it clear to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Republicans that he wants to avoid a shutdown.
Johnson told Senate Republicans at their annual retreat last week that negotiators were very close to a deal and suggested legislative text of a spending deal would emerge before Monday.
But that was before the talks hit a snag over the weekend.
Congressional leaders may have to buy themselves more time by passing a short-term measure if they cannot speed the full-year spending package through both chambers over the next four days.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) has repeatedly warned that triggering a shutdown in an election year would be a bad political move for Republicans.
“I think there have been lessons learned here, especially by the Republicans,” said James Dyer, the former Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee.
“If they need to buy a few days, I think they can buy them,” he said of the prospect of pushing off the funding deadline a few more days to wrap up the stalled negotiations.
“They usually put these expiration days close to a weekend, the assumption being that other than [having] no guards at the national parks, a weekend shutdown of the federal government doesn’t harm as many people,” he said.
Dyer said Republicans’ decision to reject a bipartisan border security deal crafted by the White House, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Senate Democrats has complicated this month’s negotiations on DHS funding.
“This is a direct result of course from having walked away from that Homeland deal. If they’re smart, they’ll own up to that now,” he said. “They had a bipartisan deal that the Senate wrote … to seal the border. If they had passed that, it would have made this Homeland title easy to do.”
The Senate border deal, which only four Republicans voted for, would have allocated an additional $20 billion to shore up the southern border.
It would have provided $6.8 billion to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, $7.6 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and $4 billion to Citizenship and Immigration Services.
House Republicans have pushed for more funding for beds and facilities to detain migrants at the border as well as policy changes, such as language to require Biden to deport migrants to Mexico to wait for their asylum requests to be processed by U.S. courts.
Lankford, who voted for the Senate’s border security deal, said that Biden has the power to implement a “remain in Mexico” policy for people surging across the border but hasn’t chosen to use it.
“Right now it is allowed in law,” he said. “The court required that there is some setup for that two years ago, but obviously it’s not being used.
“It’s allowed right now,” he said. “Anything we can do to be able to slow down the dramatic flow, we should do.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) last week called “remain in Mexico” language “problematic.”