McConnell has strategy to avert DHS shutdown
Plan would break measure into two bills
WASHINGTON – Eager to spare his party political blame for a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday he would attempt to pass a funding bill that is free of provisions targeting President Barack Obama’s immigration policies.
McConnell’s strategy, announced after a closed-door discussion with fellow Senate Republicans, faces an uncertain path with just days before a midnight Friday deadline. Conservatives quickly expressed reservations at what they considered another cave-in by Republican leadership, and Democrats said they were skeptical of whether such a plan could pass the House.
“All eyes are on Speaker (John) Boehner,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters.
The new plan would in effect break the House-passed measure into two bills. McConnell would ask Democrats for help bringing up the original House bill, but then strip out the immigration amendments that Democrats oppose. Separately, the Senate would vote by Friday on a bill blocking the president’s 2014 immigration executive actions to allow nearly 5 million immigrants to apply for protection from deportation. But unlike the House version, the Senate bill would not affect Obama’s 2012 plan deferring deportation for so-called Dreamers.
McConnell presented his plan as the best workable solution.
“The issue before us is this: Do you want to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of the fiscal year so we’re fully up and running, and capable of dealing with all the threats that we have around the world, including those against us here at home? And would you also like to express your disagreement with the president’s overreach last November? This gives us an opportunity to do both.”
Democrats have repeatedly urged McConnell to simply allow a vote on a clean funding bill. Almost the entire Senate Democratic caucus held a news conference earlier Tuesday, where Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., at one point urged Republicans “to fund our security and not to send a message to Al-Shabab that we’re just going to shut down Homeland Security,” a reference to a new threat by the Somali terrorist group against the Mall of America in her state.
But after McConnell announced his proposal, Democrats would not commit to cooperating unless Boehner guaranteed a vote in the House on the plan.