The House GOP killed the Senate’s unanimously passed bill to fund DHS, sans ICE and CBP, last week – but it’s reportedly on board with it now. Or, at least, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other lower chamber leaders are. Whether the rank-and-file will all back the bill remains to be seen – and thanks to the two-week Easter recess, it won’t be seen until April 14.
Another Trump-Backed DHS Deal
Since the shutdown began on Valentine’s Day, President Donald Trump has proposed several compromise bills, offering up some of the Democrats’ demands for ICE and CBP reform in return for funding DHS in its entirety. But the Democrats wouldn’t settle for anything less than 100% of their list – and, so, the shutdown dragged on. Now just shy of 50 days, enough lawmakers have finally agreed to a deal to put an end to what has become the longest partial shutdown in US history – even if not for another week or more.
Last week, the Senate passed essentially the same bill by unanimous voice vote. The House GOP, however, rejected it out of hand. But after another week of shutdown – and quite likely no small amount of pressure from the president – House and Senate leadership announced on Wednesday, April 1, that they had reached an agreement. The Senate once again passed its bill – basically the same one from last week – early Thursday morning. The hope was that the House would immediately take it up. But those hopes were soon dashed.
No Big Hurry in the House
Speaker Johnson called this bill a joke last week – and some of the rank-and-file Republicans remember. On a private call among the members on Thursday afternoon, dozens reportedly objected to this two-step process and to the Senate’s re-passed, ICE-free funding bill. Speaker Johnson and other leaders made the case for passing it now, but several explicitly said they wouldn’t support any package that omits immigration enforcement. “This is pretty pathetic,” one member told Politico. “It’s taking a step back.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) pitched the first phase of the plan – the general DHS appropriations bill that doesn’t include ICE and CBP – to an almost empty chamber around 7 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, and it passed without objection.
The House then met for a pro forma meeting at 8:30 but didn’t address the bill at all.
The speaker explained on Thursday that he didn’t plan to call House members back early from their two-week Easter recess for this, so it’ll likely be taken up when they return on April 14. Even then, it may take a chunk of the Democratic Party caucus to pass if enough conservatives continue to balk.
The End Is Nigh
With House and Senate leadership on board with the president’s new plan, the eventual passage of both measures through both chambers seems as inevitable as the shutdown was pointless. Democrats and Republicans alike backed the first phase through the Senate, and though it may be the middle of the month before it happens, it seems most likely the House will do the same. Sure, some Republicans will balk, but there are enough who won’t so that, along with Democrat support, it won’t matter.
Then comes phase two: ICE and CBP funding through reconciliation. The GOP majority in the House will almost certainly pass it, as that was the sticking point with previous compromises. And with a surplus of three Republicans in the Senate, the simple majority needed for a party-line reconciliation in the upper chamber won’t be difficult, either.
Perhaps the most shocking part of it all is that Democrats are going along. They know passing the first bill brings the inevitability of the second, which they don’t want. The fatigue is real, however, and they’re all feeling the pressure – and this looks an awful lot like an off-ramp that allows them to claim later that they stood their ground. Ending this way, however, means the shutdown was for naught.
