Congress grapples with U.S. domestic security agency funding

[March 03, 2015]  By David Lawder
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Heightening the political drama over funding the U.S. domestic security agency, the Senate Monday voted to block negotiations with the House of Representatives, leaving few options for House Speaker John Boehner as another midnight Friday deadline loomed.

Three days after lawmakers narrowly avoided a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security in a dispute over immigration reforms, the Senate voted 58-31 to send a "clean" full-year funding bill back to the House.

The votes leave few options for conservatives in the Republican-dominated House to use the security super-agency's budget to press its fight against Democratic President Barack Obama's orders on immigration in which he bypassed Congress.

"Speaker Boehner has the power to end this standoff with a snap of his fingers ... Put the 'clean' bill up for a vote" in the House, Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, told reporters Monday.

For Boehner, the week began amid criticism of his management of an embarrassing drama on the House floor on Friday night. In a rebuke to Boehner, the House rejected his proposed three-week funding extension. Then, hours later, a one-week stopgap bill was approved when Democrats agreed to support it.

"The fact that the president had to sign a seven-day extension does reflect an abject failure of the leadership in the House," said White House Spokesman Josh Earnest. "But they have an opportunity to address that shortcoming by allowing this full-year funding bill to go to the floor this week."

The conflict over the agency, which coordinates domestic anti-terrorism efforts and secures U.S. borders and airports, stems from conservative Republicans' demands to use the DHS budget to ban spending on Obama's 2012 and 2014 orders lifting the threat of deportation against millions of undocumented immigrants.

Democrats had blocked a funding bill with these provisions in the Senate and insisted they expected to get a deal to vote on a "clean" bill this week in the House.

Before Monday's votes in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would "keep up our fight" to fund DHS.

The agency, created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, coordinates domestic counter terrorism efforts and secures U.S. borders, airports, coastal waters and other critical facilities.

A cut-off in funding would have forced it to furlough about 30,000 employees, or about 15 percent of its workforce, but about 200,000 others would have stayed on the job without pay, including airport and border security agents.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Grant McCool)

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