A night of political brinkmanship ended late Friday when the House and Senate approved a one-week temporary spending bill to avert the partial shutdown at midnight of the Department of Homeland Security.
Lawmakers in the House voted 357 to 60 to approve the one-week measure hours after an earlier effort led by the Republican leadership to finance the agency for three weeks suffered a stunning 203-224 defeat, with 52 Republicans joining Democrats to scuttle it.
The loss, a major embarrassment for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, left the Republican-led chamber little choice but to accept the one-week measure or face questions about the GOP’s ability to run Congress and get things done .
The Senate, which earlier in the day passed a bill to fund DHS through September, approved a similar one-week measure to ensure the agency would remain fully open for the time being.
House Democrats provided 174 votes for the one-week bill after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sent a "Dear Colleague" letter to her caucus urging them to support it.
“We are asking you once again to help advance passage of the Senate passed, long-term funding of DHS by voting in favor of a 7-day patch that will be on suspension in the House tonight," Pelosi wrote. "Your vote tonight will assure that we will vote for full funding next week."
However, a Boehner spokesman Friday night denied that a deal has been reached.
If Congress had failed to approve the funding by midnight Friday, some 30,000 employees would have been furloughed from a department that includes the Border Patrol, Secret Service, Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The bulk of DHS’s agencies would continue to operate through a shutdown with workers who wouldn’t receive paychecks until the congressional stalemate ended.
The underlying issue behind the standoff was President Barack Obama’s executive actions late last year on immigration. The Senate passed a DHS funding bill last month sent over from the House, but stripped its provisions that would curtail Obama’s immigration actions. His executive order would shield more than four million immigrants from deportation.
Earlier in the day, following the House’s defeat of the three-week spending reprieve, Obama administration officials blasted Republican efforts to attack his immigration actions through DHS. But White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama was prepared to sign a short-term measure rather than risk a shutdown.
“If the president is faced with a choice of having the Department of Homeland Security shut down or fund that department for a short term, the president is not going to allow the agency to shut down,” Earnest said.
Boehner was caught once again unsuccessfully trying to unite a House Republicans caucus riven by a deep ideological divide. Now his own political perch could become precarious.
To appease angry members of his caucus who wanted to hold DHS funding hostage over Obama’s immigration order, Boehner had pushed a short-term funding bill to avoid a partial shutdown of the agency and prompt negotiations with the Senate to resolve differences between the two bills.
But a strange alliance formed in the fractious House chamber between conservative Republicans and Democrats who support the so-called “clean” funding bill passed by the Senate.
“Our leadership set the stage for this,” said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. “They said we would fight tooth and nail with the (continuing resolution) on DHS. And yet we didn’t see much messaging, coordination or communication with outside groups to try to get the American people on board with this. Finally, at the last hour, we get, ‘Give us three weeks and we’ll try to fire the base up and get something going.’ What have we been doing the last eight weeks? We’re not seeing the ‘tooth and nail’ now, that’s for sure.”
Senate Democrats said Boehner’s plan was doomed to fail because they wouldn’t agree to a House-Senate conference to reconcile the bills. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Monday on setting up a House-Senate conference committee to bridge the divide between the two chambers over the issue. Democrats are expected to block the proposal.
"We will not go to conference on some jury-rigged situation they send back…for whatever reason," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Anxiety and tempers ran high during the House vote. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., huddled and glanced about the House chamber as other lawmakers looked toward the vote total board overhead.
In the Speaker’s Lobby, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus verbally accosted Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., for voting the short-term bill. Scott said he was voting the will of his constituents.
His Georgia district includes Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and is home for thousands of employees who work for the Transportation Security Administration, a division of the Homeland Security Department.
“I represent airline pilots, air traffic controllers, TSA agents,” Scott said. “Those three weeks mean something to them.”
Still, most congressional Democrats rejoiced in the latest Republican setback. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, proclaimed “Boehner can’t count.”
Reid said “The Republican Congress has shown that it simply cannot govern.”
“Two months into the Republican Congress, we are already staring a Homeland Security shutdown square in the face, even as terrorists around the world threaten to strike America,” Reid said after the House vote. “This is about our country: how many more times will Republicans send us hurtling toward a completely avoidable cliff?”
While chaos and uncertainty reigned in the House, Friday’s DHS vote in the Senate was a sedate affair. Senators voted 68 to 31 to fund DHS through September.
As part of a plan devised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., senators also voted on a bill to restrict Obama’s immigration order that would defer deportations for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.
Requiring 60 votes to pass, the measure failed 57-42.
Earlier in the day, Senate Chaplain Barry Black captured the severity of the situation in his morning prayer that opened Friday’s session.
"Remind them that lawmakers can work miracles with cooperation, but accomplish little with legislative brinksmanship," Black, a Seventh-day Adventist and retired Navy rear admiral said in his prayer.
Renee Schoof and Danielle Ohl contributed to this article.
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