For the fourth time this month, Senate Democrats Monday blocked a $40 billion bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security and reverse some of President Barack Obama’s immigration actions.
With the clock ticking toward a partial DHS shutdown Friday, a procedural vote requiring 60 votes to begin debate on the bill failed 47-46. In the end, two Republicans and two independents joined 42 Democrats in maintaining the filibuster.
Democrats, along with some Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives, have called for a so-called ‘clean’ bill that excludes immigration-related provisions.
‘Republicans aren’t listening to anyone,’ said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ‘They’re bound and determined to see this doomed plan to the end.’
Shortly after the vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., began rolling out what could be an attempt to end the Senate deadlock - or put heat on the chamber’s Democrats.
He moved a standalone bill aimed restricting Obama’s November 2014 executive action to defer deportation on millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.
McConnell noted that some Democrats accused Obama of executive overreach with that action ‘But when they vote, they always seem to have an excuse for supporting actions they once criticized.’
‘So I’m going to begin proceedings on targeted legislation that would only address the most recent overreach in November,’ he said. ‘It isn’t tied to DHS’ funding. It removes their excuse.’
Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, applauded the move.
‘This vote will highlight the irresponsible hypocrisy of any Senate Democrat who claims to oppose President Obama’s executive overreach on immigration, but refuses to vote to stop it,’ he said.
Speaking to governors at the White House, Obama called the DHS stalemate the latest self-made congressional crisis. The administration is preparing for a partial closing of an agency that includes the Border Patrol, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
DHS officials said frontline agencies would remain open but some 30,000 employees would be furloughed and those who remain on the job won’t receive paychecks.
‘I will keep urging Congress to move past some of the habits of manufactured crisis and self-inflicted wounds that have so often bogged us down over the last five years,’ Obama said.
He added that a partial DHS shutdown would ‘have a direct impact on our economy, and it will have a direct impact on America’s national security…And as governors, you know that we can’t afford to play politics with our national security.’
The congressional standoff occurs as a Somali-based terrorist group, al-Shabaab, purportedly issued a video threat against Minneapolis’ Mall of America.
State Department, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday that the federal government wasn’t aware of any ‘specific, credible plot’ targeting the mall.
She dismissed the video as propaganda but added that federal authorities have worked with the local counterparts as well as mall owners and operators to ‘mitigate these threats.’
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