Homeland Security shutdown can be avoided
by Friday: senators
Send a link to a friend
[February 23, 2015]
By Valerie Volcovici and Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Republican
senators said they expected Congress will avoid a shutdown over the
Department of Homeland Security, which faces a partial shutdown on Feb.
27 amid a GOP push to roll back President Barack Obama's executive
actions on immigration.
|
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson pressed lawmakers to
resolve the deadlock, expressing frustration at what he described as
finger-pointing between House and Senate lawmakers over who is to
blame if Congress fails to enact a spending bill to keep the
department running.
"First of all, it's absurd that we're even having this conversation
about Congress's inability to fund homeland security in these
challenging times," Johnson said on CNN's "State of the Union". In
the same interview he also expressed concern about a Somali-based
Islamist militant group's threats to Western malls including the
Mall of America in Minnesota.
Johnson noted that if lawmakers allow a funding lapse, the
department would have to furlough some 30,000 employees and others
working in such areas as aviation security and maritime security
would be forced to come to work without a paycheck, as well as halt
DHS support for state and local law enforcement.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Feb/23/images/ads/current/sunloan_bch_021315.png) House Republicans had passed a budget bill that would reverse some
of President Barack Obama's immigration initiatives, which shielded
undocumented immigrants from departation, but Senate Deomcrats have
blocked the Senate from considering that bill in three separate
votes.
Moderate Republican senators said Sunday they think a shutdown can
be avoided by focusing on challenging the Obama adminstration's
immigration policies in the courts.
John McCain, chair of the Senate armed services committee and member
of the homeland affairs committee, said on CBS program Face the
Nation he thinks a shutdown will be avoided this week if Republicans
focus on a legal strategy on immigration.
[to top of second column] |
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Feb/23/images/ads/current/brickey_lda_061314.png)
"I think that’s the best way we can resolve this," he said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate appropriations
committee, echoed McCain's statement on the ABC This Week program.
“I hope my House colleagues will understand our best bet is to
challenge this in court. That if we don’t fund the Department of
Homeland Security, we’ll get blamed as a party," he said.
House Republicans have said Obama would take the blame for
jeopardizing national security if DHS funds are cut off. Some
conservatives have downplayed the consequences, saying there would
be no interruption in the agency's critical protective missions.
(Reporting by Will Dunham and Valerie Volcovici; additional
reporting by Anna Yukhananov, editing by William Hardy)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Feb/23/images/ads/current/edward_jones_sda_pollice.png) |