Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Wednesday he is working with the Senate on a plan to end the record-breaking 47-day partial government shutdown via passing a bill he had dismissed as a “joke” just days earlier.
Johnson and Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune jointly announced in a statement posted to X that they are pursuing a two-pronged approach to end the shutdown and fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The plan entails the House passing a Senate-approved bill to fund the entire department except its immigration enforcement agencies, which Johnson on Friday called a “gambit” and “joke.” Congress would then seek to use the reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority vote, to fully fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at a later date, per the two GOP leaders’ announced plan.
“In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” Johnson and Thune wrote in their statement.
“In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited. In return, Democrats will once again demonstrate to the American people their support for open borders and keeping criminal illegal immigrants in America,” the GOP congressional leaders continued.
The Senate passed the funding bill Johnson initially criticized at 2:18 a.m. Friday morning via unanimous consent. A total of five Senators, including Thune, two other Republicans and two Democrats were on the upper chamber’s floor at the time. Since none of the five objected, the bill was able to pass right before Congress adjourned for its two-week Easter recess.
“I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,” Johnson said on Friday, regarding the Senate-passed legislation.
Non-immigration enforcement agencies operating under DHS include the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The more than six-week-long partial shutdown caused TSA agents to work without paychecks, causing long lines at airports.
Johnson and Thune stated that they had “operated under a belief that while our country is in the midst of an international armed conflict, Democrats might finally come to their senses and understand that defunding our homeland security agencies is beyond reckless and very dangerous.”
“While we hoped they would accept the 60-day CR [continuing resolution] to fund the Department entirely so that bipartisan negotiations could continue, it is now abundantly clear that Democrats place allegiance to their radical left-wing base above all else – including their own power of the purse – which means open borders and protecting criminal illegal aliens,” they wrote in their Wednesday statement. “That is not acceptable to Republicans in Congress, nor is it to the American people. We cannot allow Democrats to any longer put the safety of the American public at risk through their open border policies, so we are taking that off the table.”
However, some conservative GOP lawmakers immediately appeared to criticize the move to take the CR, which would have funded the entire DHS, including ICE and CBP, off the table.
“Funding for ICE and CBP must never be separated from DHS funding,” Republican Texas Rep. Keith Self wrote in a Wednesday afternoon X post, minutes after Johnson and Thune released their joint statement. “If Republicans isolate it, they’re handing our border and ICE agents straight to the radicals who will defund and dismantle them every chance they get.”
“Fund DHS fully, or the open borders globalists win,” Self, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, emphasized.
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