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The Daily Signal
Homeland
Security Funding Expires Friday. Is Congress Any Closer to a Solution?
Kate Scanlon
February 22, 2015
As the Feb. 27 deadline for funding the Department of Homeland Security
looms, Congress appears no closer to a resolution to the ongoing
funding dispute.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told George Stephanopoulos
today on ABC’s “This Week” that it’s “imperative that we get it
resolved.”
“Because if we don’t, by Friday at midnight, the homeland
security budget for this nation basically evaporates,” said Johnson.
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The House recently passed a bill that simultaneously funds Homeland
Security while defunding the president’s executive actions on
immigration. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that
he simply doesn’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation in
his chamber.
Johnson said that both chambers of Congress blame the other for the
funding dispute:
“I’ve spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill talking to Democrats,
Republicans, about how critical in these challenging times in
particular, with the global terrorist threat, with the cybersecurity
threat and with the harsh winter we’re facing right now, that we have a
budget for homeland security. And I’m a little frustrated frankly
because when I talked to my friends on the Senate side, they say, ‘Go
talk to the House.’ And when I go talk to my friends on the House side,
they say, ‘It’s not me. I passed my bill. Go talk to the Senate.’ So,
they’re literally doing this.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement that
Republicans are “playing politics” with national security:
“By refusing to bring a clean bill to fund the Department of Homeland
Security to the floor, Republicans are saying that tearing apart
families is more important to them than protecting the United States
and keeping Americans safe. If my colleagues want to fix our broken
immigration system, we are happy to have a debate. But we should not
put our national security at risk in the meantime.”
Johnson echoed the wishes of Senate Democrats for a “clean” funding
bill.
“My hope is that in the four working days they have this week, they’ll
finally come together and do the right thing and passed an
appropriations bill, free and clear of any efforts to defund our
executive actions,” said Johnson.
Also appearing on “This Week,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that
he believes the “executive orders were illegal,” but he is “willing and
ready to pass a DHS funding bill.”
“I agree with the Texas judge who said that the executive orders were
illegal,” said Graham. “I hope Republicans will come together and back
the court case, file a friend of the court brief with the court and
fund DHS. I am willing and ready to pass a DHS funding bill and let
this play out in court.”
Graham added that the “worst possible outcome for this nation is to
defund the Department of Homeland Security given the multiple threats
we face to our homeland.”
“And I will not be part of that,” he said.
Graham said that the immigration battle belongs in the courts.
“I hope my House colleagues will understand that our best bet is to
challenge this in court, that if we don’t fund the Department of
Homeland Security, we’ll get blamed as a party. And to anyone who is
watching the world as it is, I’ve never seen more terrorist
organizations with more safe havens, with more money, with more
capability to strike the homeland than I do today. And that’s a direct
result of a failed foreign policy by President Obama. And the worst
thing to do is add gasoline to the fire by having the Republican Party
defund the Department of Homeland Security.”
Dan Holler, communications director at Heritage Action for America, the
sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, said that “our nation
would be better served if Secretary Johnson were focused on his job
instead of trying to implement a scheme to grant legal status to those
who ignored our nation’s immigration laws.”
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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