Johnson faces pressure from all sides as funding to pay DHS workers dwindles |
Johnson faces pressure from all sides as funding to pay DHS workers dwindles
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is facing pressure from all sides as he insists on passing a GOP-only bill to fund immigration enforcement before taking up bipartisan legislation to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), even as the department is set to run out of money to pay employees in a few weeks.
Johnson already faces an uphill battle in getting a reconciliation bill across the finish line, as hard-line conservatives push to include other priorities in the legislation and rail against the Senate-driven strategy of separating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol funding. The Senate voted to advance a budget blueprint for the bill on Tuesday, kicking off a marathon debate and a final vote to be held later this week.
But DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned Tuesday on “Fox & Friends” that the money to pay employees will run dry, with no further emergency reserves to fall back on, by the first week of May, a date by which it is highly unlikely Congress could pass the reconciliation bill.
Reconciliation allows Republicans to bypass the Democratic filibuster in the Senate, but it is a multistep and lengthy process.
Asked Tuesday if there was any chance of passing the bipartisan bill to fund most of the DHS, which has already passed the Senate, before the GOP-only reconciliation bill to avoid another lapse in pay, Johnson argued the “sequencing is important.”
“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t isolate and, as I say, make an orphan out of key agencies of the department,” Johnson said. “And there’s some concern on our side that if you do the bulk of the department first before that, and they could be left out, we can’t allow for that. So, we’re working through that. The sequencing is........