Congress failed Friday to break a six-week funding impasse that has snarled airports and left tens of thousands of federal workers without pay, raising worries about travel disruptions during the busy spring-break period.
Lawmakers were unable to resolve a dispute over immigration enforcement that has halted paychecks for many of the roughly 270,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security, even though most are required to continue working. With lawmakers deadlocked, the White House said President Donald Trump declared an emergency that would allow airport-screening officers to be paid as soon as Monday.
Other DHS employees who have been working without pay since mid-February — including many responsible for emergency response and coastal defense — would remain unpaid as lawmakers left Washington for a two-week recess.
The day began with a unanimous Senate vote on a bill to restore funding for most DHS operations while addressing the immigration-enforcement dispute that sparked the standoff. Democrats supported that measure because it did not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Republicans supported it because it omitted the restrictions Democrats sought on Trump’s enforcement tactics.
House Republicans rejected that approach and narrowly passed a stopgap bill to fund all of DHS through late May, including immigration enforcement. Democrats had already declared that unacceptable. “We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical homeland security functions — but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said.
It was unclear whether the Senate would take up the House bill, and if it did, Democrats were expected to block it.
The shutdown has led to long lines at U.S. airports as many of the roughly 50,000 security officers who have gone without pay have called in sick or resigned. Nearly 12% of Transportation Security Administration officers failed to show up for work on Thursday, including more than a third at JFK in New York and airports in Baltimore, Houston and Atlanta. Major delays and wait times of several hours or more were reported Friday. Airline officials warned the problem could worsen over the weekend without clear plans for TSA pay. Acting TSA chief Ha McNeill said some agents have slept in their cars at airports to save gas money, sold blood and taken second jobs to make ends meet.
Democrats, the minority party in both chambers, used their leverage to block DHS funding after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. They are pushing to curb Trump’s aggressive immigration-enforcement policies, which the article says have led to more than half a million deportations and sparked unrest in some cities.
Despite the shutdown, ICE and Border Patrol can draw on separate funding from the broad tax and spending bill Republicans passed last year. Republicans suggested they might try to secure additional funds for those agencies through a cumbersome procedure to bypass Democratic opposition, though unity within the party in an election year is uncertain.
Locked out of power in Washington, Democrats forced two government shutdowns in the past six months; neither produced their desired outcomes, including a failed effort last November to extend expiring health subsidies. The current standoff likewise ended without a deal on immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration has, at least for now, stepped back from some of the confrontational tactics that sparked mass protests in cities including Minneapolis and Chicago. Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem this month; her successor, former Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin, has indicated support for some Democratic proposals, such as limiting agents’ ability to enter homes without a judicial warrant. Other Democratic proposals appear unlikely to advance — Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, called their demand that agents operate without masks a “nonstarter.”
