– The Washington Times
The Senate returned to Washington on Tuesday with just a few days left to avert a partial government shutdown and an intractable impasse over funding ICE.
Democrats want to separate the Department of Homeland spending bill from five others the Senate needs to pass by Friday and renegotiate it with more guardrails on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Republicans want to keep the six-bill package intact to avoid having to return it to the House.
“It’s always a risky proposition if you have to send it back to the House, and nobody knows what’s going to happen over there,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota, Republican, told reporters.
The House Freedom Caucus is threatening to block any spending package that comes back to the House without funding for DHS.
“We cannot support giving Democrats the ability to control the funding of our Department of Homeland Security,” the group of far-right conservatives said in a letter to President Trump, where they accused Senate Democrats of trying to renege on the bipartisan deal they helped negotiate on the spending bills.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said the DHS funding bill needs to be reworked “in the wake of ICE’s abuses and the administration’s recklessness.”
Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, the second time a federal immigration agent killed a U.S. citizen protester in Minneapolis this month, has united Senate Democrats against passing the DHS funding bill without legislative action to rein in the president’s deportation surge.
“What ICE is doing is state-sanctioned thuggery, and it must be stopped,” Mr. Schumer said.
He said the president’s efforts to reduce ICE’s presence in Minnesota “isn’t good enough.”
Mr. Thune said there should be a “full and impartial investigation” into the shooting of Mr. Pretti and suggested the administration could address some of the Democrats’ concerns outside of the DHS funding bill.
“Productive talks are going, and I urge my Democrat colleagues to continue their engagement and find a path forward that will avoid a needless shutdown and not jeopardize full funding for key agencies like FEMA and the Coast Guard,” he said.
Mr. Schumer said, “The fix should come from Congress.”
“The public can’t trust the administration to do the right thing on its own,” he said. “And Republicans and Democrats must work together to make that happen.”
That leaves the two sides at an impasse ahead of Friday’s shutdown deadline, with six of the 12 annual appropriations bills carrying the bulk of discretionary funding still outstanding.
The House passed all six bills and sent them to the Senate as a single package. Breaking the package up, as Mr. Schumer is suggesting, would require unanimous consent from all 100 senators — something several Republicans would block.
“Although Republicans control both chambers of Congress and White House, Democrats still think they can call the shots,” said Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican.
He said Republicans should ditch the filibuster rather than acquiesce to Democrats’ demands, saying, “The days of ’heads Democrats win, tails Republicans lose’ must come to an end.”
The Freedom Caucus backed that idea, among others, in their letter to Mr. Trump. They said if Democrats want to play hardball, Republicans should “take all steps necessary to fund the government unilaterally.”
The group said that could include eliminating the filibuster, using an emergency reconciliation bill that can be passed without the threat of a filibuster or the executive branch transferring funding “with maximum flexibility.”
Senate Republicans do not have enough support in their own conference to end the filibuster, with Mr. Thune among those in opposition.
And reconciliation can only be used for mandatory appropriations, meaning large portions of the discretionary budget Congress is trying to pass could not go through that process.
A first Senate procedural vote on the spending package will take place Thursday, absent a unanimous consent agreement to hold it sooner.
Senate Democrats are showing no signs of relenting in their opposition to advancing the package without stripping out the DHS bill, and they are trying to shift blame for a potential shutdown.
“If Senate Republicans refuse to strip out the DHS bill to put real constraints on ICE — and hold hostage the vast majority of government funding — then Republicans are complicit in the chaos and own the potential government shutdown,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
