White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told senators at a Budget Committee hearing on Thursday that DHS was “disintegrating.” “There is no money for the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security,” Vought told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “As of right now, the Department of Homeland Security is disintegrating because the secretary and I are having to figure out ways to temporarily fund people’s paychecks so we don’t have people quit and embark on new careers.”
President Trump signed a memo on March 27 to pull funds from elsewhere to pay TSA agents, including back pay for missed checks. Later, on April 3, he signed another extending it to all DHS workers who had missed pay. According to Vought, they’ve been pulling “temporarily” from funding in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the disaster relief fund.
That worked this go around – and it might work once or twice again – but Vought warns there are risks to this approach: “As we draw down that fund, we are not prepared for a natural disaster from a funding standpoint.”
Conflict in Congress
All the while in Congress, no headway has been made. The shutdown began when funding ran out on February 14 – and by late February, essential employees were working without pay. Just before the Easter recess began, the Senate passed a bill to pay for all of DHS except ICE and CBP and sent it to the House, with hopes of later crafting a party-line reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP for three years. At the time, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called it a joke and rejected it out of hand. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and President Donald Trump were eventually able to bring him around, yet the speaker still refused to cut short the recess or to handle it during one of the pro forma sessions during the break.
They’ve been back just about all week, however, and still, there has been no additional vote. The Senate returned Monday, April 13, and the House came back the next day. But there’s a lot of animosity for the Senate-led path. “We’re going to have to do a skinny reconciliation package – as it’s called here in the halls – and it’s going to come from the Senate,” Johnson said during a press conference on Wednesday. “We’re going to move it as expeditiously as possible. We’re going to do our part and fund those essential functions of the government, and then we’ll do the rest of Homeland Security,” he added.
That said, the House Freedom Caucus is speaking up against this approach, and Johnson can’t make this happen without their votes. Some, like Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), want the House to take the lead and view efforts to fast-track the current plan as the Senate taking over. Others just want to load up the reconciliation package with other priorities, despite the danger that it could cost them the reconciliation process.
A vote on the non-reconciliation bill could come as early as next week, but it seems, at this point, unlikely to pass. And then what? How long until the next quick fix? How long will DHS hold out?
