The Senate voted three times this week to move forward with a Department of Homeland Security funding bill–which includes both DHS appropriations and measures to block the president’s 2014 executive action on immigration–and failed three times, with Democrats unwilling to let Republicans use a spending bill to force immigration reform.
A team of Democratic leaders spoke to reporters Thursday, arguing that “we’re ready to debate immigration, there’s no doubt about that, we’re happy to do that”–just not until funding for national security agencies is secured, said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee.
“We should not be having an ideological fight about whether we’re going to provide those resources that our communities, that our states, that our agencies need,” she said after describing various ways that grants for first responders had been used in her state.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), ranking member of the full appropriations committee, said at the press conference that Democrats expect a vote on a clean funding bill–with no policy changes attached–and then would agree to debate comprehensive immigration reform.
“We have bipartisan support for the fiscal approach on how to fund the Department of Homeland Security,” she said, which was agreed to by Democrats and Republicans on both the House and Senate appropriations committees last year, before Republicans decided to fund DHS with a continuing resolution and save the new year appropriations debate until this month. “The House bill has a financial appropriations recommendation that’s identical to the Senate. We could pass it this afternoon. I believe it would pass 100 to nothing because we agree on the funding. Isn’t that what appropriations are supposed to be? We’re not supposed to legislate.”
Mikulski slammed Republicans for putting vital agencies at risk of being shut down at the end of the month if Congress can’t pass a bill that the president will sign.
“We’re ready to protect America. They want to demagogue on immigration,” she said. “We want to make sure that there is money in the federal checkbook for annual appropriations to, number one, make sure that we’re protecting America against cyber security attacks–whether it’s against our financial services, an attack on our grid–to be able to protect us against those who would have a predatory intent against us. We want to fund the Coast Guard to be sure they are protecting us. Right now they’re out there doing search and rescue in one of the most horrific winters that New England has faced, they’re out there protecting the coast against terrorist intrusion and against drug dealers.”
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however, defended the series of votes as an attempt to block a presidential power grab. He said on the Senate floor that Democrats were choosing to “stand tall for the ability of politicians to do things President Obama himself has described as ‘unwise and unfair,’” referring to taking executive rather than congressional action to enact immigration reform. McConnell said the repeated votes were meant to give Democrats the chance “to vote with us to break their party’s filibuster of Homeland Security funding and help us protect American democracy.”