By David Morgan
WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – With financing for the U.S. Secret Service and airport security about to run dry, Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives will try on Thursday to finalize legislation needed to fund agencies within the Department of Homeland Security that have been in the grip of a partial shutdown for nearly 11 weeks.
House Republicans, overcoming long delays caused by party infighting over farm legislation, passed a $70 billion budget blueprint to provide new money for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol late on Wednesday. But a broader Senate-passed package that would fund other DHS agencies including the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard and FEMA, remained in limbo despite backing from President Donald Trump and dire warnings from the White House budget office.
Calls for enacting the legislation and its funding for presidential security, which the Senate passed unanimously twice, have intensified since Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, where prosecutors say a man tried to assassinate Trump.
But the lack of movement has raised questions about whether House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican leadership team were defying the White House, a suggestion the speaker vehemently denied.
“We’re not defying the White House. I just got off the phone with the president. Everybody understands what we’re doing. We’re all one team. We’re working together. I met with Leader Thune two hours ago. He knows exactly what we’re doing,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters. “We understand the urgency of it.”
House Republican hardliners and other conservatives have refused to back the legislation because it contains language specifying that none of its funding is for Trump’s immigration crackdown, which led to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year.
“The language of zeroing out funding for Border Patrol and ICE is really problematic for a lot of our members. So the desire would be to rewrite that provision,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole.
Johnson could try to pass the legislation as early as Thursday under conditions that would rely on Democratic support to overcome Republican opposition, according to lawmakers. But it was unclear what path House Republican leaders would take.
But a modified version of the legislation would have to be passed again by the Senate, causing a potential delay and raising the risk that Democrats who approved the earlier language might object to any rephrasing.
The White House Office of Management and Budget warned earlier this week that funding for agencies covered by the legislation would run out in May, which begins on Friday. If the funding is exhausted, it said, the administration would be unable to pay all DHS personnel, risking renewed havoc for air travel and a jeopardized national security posture.
The House and Senate are both due to leave town on Thursday for a one-week recess.
In the meantime, House passage of the budget resolution on Thursday allows congressional committees to begin writing separate legislation to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Republicans are hoping to pass the legislation in May by using a special “budget reconciliation” procedure that allows them to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate.
The two immigration enforcement agencies received $130 billion in funding last year through the same procedure – a huge boost that Trump requested to carry out his massive migrant deportation campaign.
(Reporting by David Morgan. Editing by Michael Learmonth, Alexandra Hudson)
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