Congress is poised to miss another self-imposed deadline to release legislative text for the final spending package to avoid a partial government shutdown this week, with disagreements on how to fund the Department of Homeland Security a top sticking point.
Lawmakers had wanted to release the text of the deal on Sunday to give the House the necessary 72 hours to schedule a vote. But that target was missed over the weekend and Monday proved also unsuccessful over lingering disagreements about the homeland bill with time running out to clear pending legislation through both chambers before midnight on Friday.
The House and Senate have to pass the final six of the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government and narrowly averted a partial shutdown by passing the first set of six last week. Appropriators are struggling to reach a deal on the six remaining bills, which fund the Pentagon, State Department, Labor Department, Health and Human Services Department, DHS, and foreign operations.
Five of those appropriations bills are finalized, and negotiations are complete, three sources familiar with the process told the Washington Examiner. However, lingering disagreements on the bill to fund the DHS have caused a delay in the full package being released.
Disputes between House Republicans and the Senate over immigration and defense policy are the primary catalysts for the delay, with appropriators in the lower chamber demanding the Senate and White House agree to a series of demands.
House leaders want the Biden administration to resume construction of the border wall and reinstitute the “Remain in Mexico” policy established under former President Donald Trump. They also want to eliminate Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s salary from the department’s budget and end funding for the Biden administration’s CBP One application, which the agency uses to process migrants being paroled into the country.
Democrats have rebuffed such requests, and talks continue.
Negotiators initially planned to release legislative text for the spending package Sunday afternoon, but those plans were delayed over disagreements on how to allocate funding for the DHS for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Initially, lawmakers planned to move forward with a continuing resolution to keep DHS funding at the same fiscal 2023 funding levels for the remainder of fiscal 2024. But disagreements arose on how to allocate those funds, prompting the White House to threaten to veto the CR proposal, according to two sources familiar with the talks.
“Republicans have always said we will provide all the resources necessary for enforcement, but not a blank check to simply ‘manage’ people into the country and bail out sanctuary cities,” a senior GOP aide said on Sunday. “Republicans have been clear and consistent that more appropriations are necessary for border enforcement, which Democrats had consistently objected to. On this front, the House bill provided significantly more than the Senate bill, and House offers throughout the bicameral negotiation have done the same.”
As a result, House Republicans have urged the White House to enter into negotiations between congressional Republicans and Democrats, underscoring the precarious nature of the negotiations. Republicans have accused the White House of failing to communicate with congressional Democrats, which one aide says “has placed us on the brink of a shutdown.”
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The government is set to enter a partial shutdown if some sort of spending deal is not made by the end of this week that can make its way through the House and Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden.
However, if negotiations continue to break down over DHS funding, lawmakers may need to turn to another stopgap spending measure — something that negotiators on both sides of the aisle have expressed opposition to.