US House Speaker •

US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday reportedly told his fellow Republicans that the House will be voting later in the day on a crucial Senate bill intended to provide funding to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the complete fiscal year without lodging any restriction on President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

According to the members present at the meeting, the vote is expected to end the ongoing legislative conflict between Republicans and Democrats over the DHS funding.

The security department, which spearheads domestic counterterrorism operations, will run out of funds at midnight on Friday.

Conservative Republicans in House have demanded for the inclusion of language in the spending legislation that would block Obama’s executive actions that would lift the deportation threat for millions of undocumented people in the country. But President Obama and his Democratic leaders have supported the so-called ‘clean’ DHS funding bill which has been already passed by the Senate.

Last Friday, the House resorted to a temporary solution and passed the bill for one-week spending fix when just few hours were left for funding lapse. The House voted 357-60 for the bill and temporarily averted the shutdown.

The Senate-passed bill, which includes the immigration provisions, has been repeatedly blocked by Republican Democrats.

The bill will provide approximately USD 40 billion in funding for the security agency that secures American borders, coastal waters and airports. In the dearth of enough funds, the security agency would be forced to send its nearly 30,000 employees, or around 15 percent of its total workforce, on furlough.

In an another development in the Homeland Security funding impasse, US House Speaker John Boehner has said that he is ready to allow the lapse of the funding for the department as part of a Republican’s efforts to roll back the controversial executive actions on immigration by President Barack Obama.

When asked if he was prepared to let the funding for the department lapse, Boehner said, “Certainly. The House has acted. We’ve done our job. Senate Democrats are the ones standing in the way and jeopardizing funding.”

The Democrats in the Senate have thrice blocked consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill this month. The funding bill has already been passed by the House.

“The Americans didn’t give us majority to fight between House and Senate Republicans. They want things to be done. You cannot cut funding from the Department of Homeland Security. We need to sit down and work this thing out,” Arizona Senator John McCain, a known Republican voice, said at a ‘Meet the Press’ event.

McCain made the remarks while referring to Republicans who took control of both the House and Senate after winning the congressional elections in November last year.

The Senate Democrats are not opposing the funding of the department, but they have strong objections against the Republicans’ House amendments that strip funding from Democratic President’s executive orders of 2012 and 2014 that lifts a deportation threat for millions of undocumented immigrants in the country.

Last week, Boehner had expressed his serious disappointment over Senate Democrats’ actions of stalling the bill, asking them that “when they are going to get off their ass and do something other than to vote no.”

The funding for the Department of Homeland Security will expire on February 27.

House likely to vote on DHS funding bill without immigration provisions

Let funding Homeland Security funding lapse, says Boehner

Categories