By David Morgan
WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) – With financing for the U.S. Secret Service and airport security about to run dry, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed bipartisan legislation to fund Department of Homeland Security agencies including the Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration in a move to end the partial shutdown that has gripped their operations for nearly 11 weeks.
The action, taken by a voice vote, sends the legislation to President Donald Trump to sign into law.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican leadership team opted to stick with the bill that the Senate passed unanimously twice, ignoring calls from hardline conservatives for modifications that could have further delayed the DHS money. Conservatives had refused to back the legislation because it contains language specifying that none of its funding would go to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year.
House Republicans managed to ease those objections on Wednesday by passing a $70 billion budget blueprint to provide new money specifically for ICE and Border Patrol.
Calls for action on the broader DHS bill have intensified since Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, where prosecutors say a man tried to assassinate Trump. The White House budget office has also warned that homeland security operations not involved in Trump’s immigration crackdown would run out of paycheck money in May for workers employed in presidential and airport security, FEMA disaster relief and U.S. Coast Guard operations.
“We were not going to have lines at TSA. Everybody will get their paychecks now,” Johnson told reporters after the vote.
House passage was a victory for Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who had pressed House Republicans to abandon plans for modifying the DHS funding bill, a step that would have required the Senate to vote on it a third time and raised the risk of further delays.
Johnson justified his decision to delay consideration of the DHS bill by saying House Republicans needed to see funding move forward on ICE and CBP.
“We held the homeland bill, the underlying funding bill, because we had to ensure that they could not isolate and eliminate those two critical agencies. We are getting those done now,” the speaker said.
In the meantime, House passage of the budget resolution on Thursday allows congressional committees to begin writing separate legislation to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Republicans are hoping to pass the legislation in May by using a special “budget reconciliation” procedure that allows them to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate.
The two immigration enforcement agencies received $130 billion in funding last year through the same procedure – a huge boost that Trump requested to carry out his massive migrant deportation campaign.
The House and Senate are both due to leave town on Thursday for a one-week recess.
(Reporting by David Morgan. Editing by Michael Learmonth, Alexandra Hudson)
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