Feuding US lawmakers narrowly avoided a US Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Friday at the 11th hour, but funded the agency only until March 6, forcing the US Congress to revisit the issue next week.
US House of Representatives and Senate members scrambled to prevent the premier agency securing the US against terror threats from running out of money at midnight, as the department became a battleground for lawmakers clashing over US President Barack Obama’s controversial immigration reforms.
The president signed the temporary measure into law shortly before midnight, despite his preference for full funding through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Earlier attempts to secure comprehensive funding failed spectacularly on Friday, with conservative Republicans balking because amendments they had inserted to repeal Obama’s immigration executive orders had been stripped out.
With the clock ticking, the House of Representatives passed the seven-day measure 357 to 60, with just two hours to spare. The Senate approved it earlier by voice vote.
US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi suggested congressional leaders agreed to a deal that would see Democrats help get the one-week stopgap over the finish line, in return for a vote next week on full funding.
“Your vote tonight will assure that we will vote for full funding next week,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues.
If Congress did not pass legislation that allows money to flow, 30,000 department employees would be furloughed, while about 200,000 agency staff, including border agents, airport screeners and Secret Service agents, would be ordered to work without pay.
“It’s the 11th hour, and we must act” to fund the agency that defends “our home turf,” Republican US Representative Harold Rogers, the top House appropriator, told his colleagues.
The Senate approved a “clean” funding bill on Friday, free of amendments sought by House Republicans to block Obama’s immigration executive orders.
However, US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, under pressure from his party’s right wing, refused to put the measure to a vote.
Then, in one of the harshest rebukes of Boehner’s four-year tenure as speaker, more than 50 House conservatives joined Democrats in rejecting a three-week extension.
Republican leaders kept that 15-minute vote open for nearly an hour as they sought to corral support, but conservatives were not budging.
They wanted Boehner and others to stand firm by demanding the amendments repealing the immigration plan, which would provide deportation relief for millions of illegal immigrants, be kept in the funding measure.
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