Republicans reject Democrats’ effort to pay TSA by suspending Senate rules

Senate Republicans on Saturday voted against an unusual procedural gambit by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to suspend the Senate rules and advance a bill through the Rules Committee to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The motion failed by a party-line vote of 41 to 49. It needed 60 votes to succeed.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) dismissed the proposal as a “convoluted” attempt to circumvent the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is engaged in talks with White House border czar Tom Homan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, which saw its funding lapse on Feb. 14.

“This is a Schumer motion to suspend the rules and refer the House message, the bill that we’re on, to the Rules Committee, which doesn’t have jurisdiction over appropriations or spending, and he’s trying to call it a vote to fund TSA?” Thune said on the floor.

“I don’t know how you come up with this. I will give you credit for coming up with something that’s convoluted, but it doesn’t do anything that the [Democratic] leader says it does,” he added.

Schumer framed the vote as a simple “yes or no” on whether TSA agents should get funded during the shutdown.

“If senators want to pay TSA workers and end the airport chaos, they should support my motion,” he said.

Thune, however, countered that Democrats on Friday voted for a fifth time to block a House-passed bill to fund the entire Department of Homeland Security, including TSA.

“We’ve had countless motions by our side to pass a continuing resolution that would fund all of [Homeland Security,] including TSA and consistently blocked by this side,” he said, referring to Democrats.

Democratic senators sought to score political points by arguing that almost all Senate Republicans had voted against funding TSA, which is under increasing pressure because of a 36-day shutdown.

“Today, Senate Republicans voted against paying TSA agents because they insist on tying TSA funding to their push to give even more money to ICE—without basic reforms. That is not how this should work—and it is just plain wrong that Republicans are preventing TSA agents from getting paid while airport lines grow longer across the country,” Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the Democratic vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said after the vote.

Democrats pointed out that Republicans objected to a bill offered by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) on March 19 to pay TSA workers while negotiations over immigration enforcement reform continue and they blocked a similar proposal offered by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on March 18.

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