Security funding: another tactic

House GOP will float short-term legislation.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans agreed Thursday to push shortterm funding to prevent a partial shutdown at the Homeland Security Department while leaving in place Obama administration immigration policies they have vowed to repeal.

“The speaker’s pretty adamant that he’s not going to shut down Homeland Security, especially in light of the Mall of America and in light of what’s happened in New York,” said Rep. Dennis Ross., R-Fla., emerging from a closed-door strategy session with the Republican rank-and-file.

He referred to a suggestion made by one terrorist group that a sympathizer should attack the Mall of America, an enormous shopping facility in Minnesota, as well as the arrests Wednesday in Brooklyn of men charged with plotting to help Islamic State fighters.

Ross and other Republicans said legislation to fund DHS for three weeks would be put to a vote in the House today.

Senate Democratic officials indicated they would agree to the measure, and predicted President Barack Obama would sign the measure, averting a partial shutdown of an agency with major anti-terrorism re- “When I make decisions, I’ll let you know,” Speaker John Boehner said when asked what the House reaction would be if the Senate approved a bill to keep DHS in operation. sponsibilities.

Outlining a second step in a revised strategy, Ross said House Republicans would also seek negotiations on a separate spending bill on track for Senate passage today. It would fund the agency through the Sept. 30 end of the budget year while also rolling back Obama’s immigration directives.

Senate rules require 60 votes to initiate formal compromise talks between the houses on any bill, and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said in advance his par- ty would use its strength to prevent that from happening in the current clash.

Anticipating that, some Republicans made the case inside the strategy session for simply conceding defeat and agreeing to a longer-term funding bill without conditions, according to officials who attended the session.

In addition, Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., and a former chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, told reporters that lawmakers should think

Coast Guard Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of the Secretary and Executive Management Science and Technology Directorate Domestic Nuclear Detection Office

Office of Health Affairs

633 of the consequences “if a bomb goes off in their district.” To consider shuttering the agency “is wrong politically, morally and governmentally. Politically, it’s going to kill us. Morally, you’re equating an immigration order with the lives of American citizens,” he said.

Without legislation signed into law by the weekend, an estimat- ed 30,000 Homeland Security employees would be furloughed beginning Monday.

Tens of thousands more would be expected to work without pay. Many Republicans have said they fear they would pay a political price for even a partial shutdown at the department, which has major responsibilities for anti-terrorism.

The proposal under consideration by House Republicans marked a retreat from their longstanding insistence that no money be approved for Homeland Security as long as Obama’s immigration directives remained in place. Yet it followed by a few days an announcement by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he was moving to uncouple the two issues.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it appeared Obama was closing in on a triumph in his latest showdown with the Republican-controlled Congress. GOP leaders announced last fall they would attempt to force a rollback in his immigration policy by tying the issue to funds at Homeland Security, a tradeoff he has adamantly opposed since it was first broached.

With directives issued in 2012 and late last year, Obama largely eliminated the threat of deportation for more than 4 million immigrants who entered the country illegally, including some brought to the United States as youngsters by their parents.