Senate Republicans seeking to end the two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fear that Democrats will trigger an even larger government shutdown in October and are working on strategies to avert a politically disastrous scenario.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.) plans to pass a budget proposal through the Senate this week that is a budget reconciliation bill Republicans aim to pass later this spring. That measure would bypass a Senate Democratic filibuster to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol until 2029.
But there is growing concern among GOP senators that even if Congress funds ICE and the Border Patrol for the next three and a half years, Democrats will incite a fight in September to trigger another government shutdown.
The current shutdown of DHS is the longest in history, breaking the record set last fall when the government shut down for 43 days over Democrats’ demands to expand health care funding.
Republicans say they are concerned that the regular government funding process has been irreparably damaged after two funding standoffs during President Trump’s second term.
“I’m very concerned about the appropriations process,” Thune said, predicting that Democrats will never agree to fund ICE and the Border Patrol while Trump is in office.
Other GOP lawmakers also doubt Democrats will embrace the fight over government funding, knowing that another shutdown would cause more political pain for Congress and the party in charge of Washington.
“You can bet that’s Chuck Schumer’s game plan, to shut down the government every chance he gets,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who said he favors passing whatever legislation is necessary to avoid another government shutdown in the fall.
Democrats, of course, have repeatedly denied accusations that they are playing politics with government funds. Instead, they say, they are using the few levers they have in GOP-controlled Washington to try to advance popular priorities like expanding Obamacare subsidies or reforming immigration enforcement.
Still, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) predicted during an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) will find another reason to freeze government funding in September.
“I’ll make a bet now, $100, that Schumer wants to do the same thing — on October 1 — shut down the entire federal government for a month, so that on Election Day, the government shuts down, you have four-hour lines at the airports again, and the Democrats can say, ‘Look, what the Republicans are doing, they don’t know,’ they don’t know.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) also thinks Democrats are likely to force another government shutdown, seeing as “the more chaos, the better” before Election Day.
Thune said Republican lawmakers are discussing strategies to pass competing proposals sponsored by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) to either pay essential federal workers during the shutdown or automatically implement stopgap government funding measures to avoid future shutdowns.
Senate Republicans discussed those measures during a luncheon meeting Tuesday.
Johnson and Lankford both talked about their offers, according to a person briefed on the internal discussions.
“I’m all for that, I think it’s a good idea,” Thune said of the legislation to soften the impact of the government funding lapse.
“Anything we can do to ensure that Democrats don’t decide to play partisan political games with the way our government works will have a positive outcome,” Thune said.
“We are seriously talking about what is the best way to implement to ensure that at least government employees continue to be paid amid the government shutdown,” he added.
An idea has been released to add legislation to prevent or soften government shutdowns in a budget reconciliation package that Republicans plan to pass in the next few weeks. The legislation will proceed on a procedural fast track, bypassing the Democratic filibuster.
But there are questions about whether the Senate rule-shutdown language complies with the chamber’s strict Bird Rule, which allows decisions to pass on a simple-majority vote under the reconciliation process.
Thune said there is “a lot of support among all labor unions” for legislation to pay essential federal workers during the government shutdown, but he questioned how lawmakers would rule.
The Senate voted 52-46 Tuesday to move forward on the Senate budget proposal, setting up a late-night series of votes on amendments to the measure for later this week.
Republican senators have also suggested that government shutdown legislation could be attached to a bill passed by the Senate before Easter to defund most of the Department of Homeland Security, except for ICE and the Border Patrol.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has refused to bring the Senate bill up for a vote in the House, telling reporters Tuesday that he wants to wait until the Senate passes a budget reconciliation measure to defund ICE and the Border Patrol for the next three and a half years.
Johnson, the Wisconsin senator, has reached out to House colleagues, hoping conservatives may feel more inclined to support the Senate-passed homeland security appropriations bill if it is paired with legislation that would prevent another government shutdown.
“What I suggest is … talk in the House, pass the Senate DHS funding bill and add the Shutdown Fairness Act to it, send it back to the Senate,” Johnson said. “The House is reluctant to pass the Senate [Homeland Security appropriations] Bill. It will be an inspiration to the House.”
Sen. Johnson has introduced the Shutdown Fairness Act, which would ensure that federal workers deemed essential and required to work during a shutdown would receive paychecks during that time.
The proposal would require critical workers such as air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees to continue receiving paychecks even as government funding ends.
It will reduce backlogs that crippled airports across the country during last year’s record 43-day government shutdown and the Department of Homeland Security’s partial shutdown this year.
Johnson said his proposal has strong support from federal labor unions and urged his Senate Democratic colleagues to support it as well.
Lankford has introduced a competing proposal, the Stop Government Shutdown Act, which would automatically impose two-week government funding stopgaps if Congress fails to pass appropriations bills on time.
The legislation would prohibit taxpayer-funded travel allowances when those automatic continuing resolutions are triggered to force lawmakers to stay in Washington until the funding impasse is resolved.
“We’re both trying to solve the problem,” Lankford said, comparing his and Johnson’s government shutdown bills. “His bill funds the salary [for federal workers]Which is obviously extremely important. But the challenge is that it does not encourage us to complete our work. “
Lankford said members of the Senate Appropriations Committee favor his bill because it puts pressure on lawmakers to keep working to pass appropriations bills.
Under Lankford’s bill, which has received past support from Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan (NH), lawmakers “must be in session seven days a week and stay until we get the appropriations done, and you can’t go to bills other than appropriations.”
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