When a lengthy government shutdown came to an end in the fall, members created a new deadline of Jan. 30 to keep federal operations going through the end of the fiscal year. By and large, both parties showed little appetite for another shutdown, and the appropriations process ran relatively smoothly.
That is, until federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, at which point everything quickly changed, and Democrats demanded sweeping reforms to Immigrations Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
This led to a brief, partial government shutdown, which began on Jan. 30, but which was resolved a few days later with a compromise package: The parties agreed to fund the entirety of the federal government, except the Department of Homeland Security, for the rest of the fiscal year. As part of the deal, Congress and the White House gave themselves two weeks to negotiate changes to immigration enforcement tactics.
To the surprise of no one, those bipartisan talks failed and funding for the massive agency expired, causing a DHS-specific shutdown.
One month later, efforts to end the standoff are going nowhere, though there has been some relevant activity on Capitol Hill in recent days. The New York Times reported:
The congressional impasse over funding the Department of Homeland Security is entering its second month after the Senate on Thursday again deadlocked over providing money for the agency, even as airports continued to experience security line backups.
The latest Republican proposal to end the standoff was difficult to take seriously: GOP senators proposed reopening the entirety of DHS, without any reforms whatsoever, for two weeks. This approach needed 60 votes to advance, and it fell far short on Thursday’s 51-46 vote. (Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only member of the minority to vote with the GOP.)
But the latest Democratic proposal is far more interesting. From the Times’ article:
Over the past two days, Democrats have taken to the Senate floor to propose funding [the Transportation Security Administration] and other branches of the Department of Homeland Security separately, to clear the way for paying federal employees while lawmakers seek negotiations with the White House over limits on the immigration agents.
In other words, the Democratic approach narrows the focus: Congress can reopen much of the DHS immediately — everything from TSA to FEMA, the Coast Guard to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — since those other agencies have nothing to do with the fight over reforms to immigration enforcement tactics.
But when Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, pitched this plan on Wednesday, Republicans balked.
A day later, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada made a related effort that would fully fund TSA specifically, with no extraneous or unrelated provisions. Republicans rejected that, too.
To hear GOP senators tell it, they are, at least for now, staunchly opposed to any kind of “piecemeal” approach. They have not, however, explained why an incremental solution is so objectionable.
As the second month of the partial shutdown gets underway, there’s no reason for optimism about a resolution.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
