Democrats Prepare for What Could Be Prolonged Political Battle Over Funding for Homeland Security Department

Now that the vast majority of the federal government is funded for the remainder of the fiscal year, Democrats are preparing for what could become a prolonged political battle over the Department of Homeland Security’s budget. If no agreement is reached by next Friday, then the department could shut down for a lengthy period. After the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti last month, Democrats united around the position that DHS could not be funded without real reforms at ICE and Border Patrol. Senate Democrats, who have the power to block spending bills, negotiated a solution where they would vote to fund the vast majority of the government last week, though DHS spending would be stripped out and extended just until next Friday. On Tuesday, the House passed that Senate-brokered legislation and sent it to President Trump, who signed it just hours later. The short-term spending bill for DHS — known as a continuing resolution — was negotiated by Senator Chuck Schumer, though he received little love from fellow Democrats for his bipartisanship. When the bill came back to the House Tuesday, every member of House Democratic leadership voted against it. Speaking to reporters after the vote, the House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, said he and his colleagues would not support kicking the can down the road again. “An additional CR from our standpoint is off the table,” Mr. Jeffries said. Later that day, he huddled with Mr. Schumer in his office on the other side of the Capitol just steps from the Senate floor. When asked by the New York Sun if he agreed with Mr. Jeffries’ position on no more short-term spending bills, the Senate minority leader did not give a direct answer. “We discussed a whole lot of things and, as I said, it was a very good meeting and I think we think along the same lines,” Mr. Schumer told the Sun. “That’s all I’m saying.”Democrats are making a host of demands to rein in DHS agents in exchange for funding the department. The proposed reforms, which would be codified in law, include an end to “roving patrols,” new restrictions on what kinds of warrants can be used for searches, required coordination between federal, state, and local officials, the implementation of a uniform code of conduct, the guarantee of independent investigations of incidents involving agents, and requirements that agents wear body cameras and identify themselves.Speaker Mike Johnson has already said that a number of these ideas — including forcing agents to identify themselves and restrictions on administrative warrants — would not fly in the House. The chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham, said the same during a White House event on Tuesday. “It makes no sense,” Mr. Graham said of requiring agents to get judicial warrants for every arrest, saying that it would take too long to “get a search warrant to get 15 million people out.”“I’ve got a better idea: end sanctuary cities,” the South Carolina senator said. That isn’t the only demand that conservatives are making ahead of the funding vote next week. Conservatives in the House were ready to go to war with the Senate on Tuesday if Mr. Johnson did not include the SAVE America Act in the DHS funding bill itself. That legislation would require every person registering to vote to produce a federal photo identification, such as a passport, among other things. Many House conservatives ultimately voted yes on the DHS funding measure on Tuesday, though depending on what kind of deal senators iron out in the next week-and-a-half, there could be an uproar in Mr. Johnson’s GOP conference. On Monday night, a small band of House Republicans said that the Senate majority leader, Senator John Thune, would make changes to Senate procedure in order to bring up the SAVE America Act under a simple majority threshold, rather than the typical 60-vote threshold required to pass most legislation. Those House lawmakers seemingly misunderstood Mr. Thune’s position given the fact he implied Tuesday that the simple majority procedure would not be deployed for the bill. He says ditching the 60-vote threshold — which allows senators to bring an end to debate — would give Democrats the power to hold the Senate floor for days or weeks at a time, which would stall the rest of the chamber’s agenda. “The coin [of] the realm in the Senate is floor time. There’s a finite amount of it and we have a lot of things we have to do,” Mr. Thune told reporters at a press conference, saying that he would rather prioritize bipartisan bills dealing with things like housing and infrastructure.

Democrats Prepare for What Could Be Prolonged Political Battle Over Funding for Homeland Security Department

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