WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders plan to vote Tuesday to pass a government funding package approved by the Senate, three days after a shutdown began.
Funding lapsed Saturday amid divisions in Congress over changes to the Department of Homeland Security after agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., pushed the vote back by one day after, he said, Democrats conveyed to him that they won’t provide enough votes to skip the procedural hurdles.
“I think we’ll get it done by tomorrow,” Johnson said Monday.
The bill’s prospects trended positively through the day after President Donald Trump threw his support behind it and a key Democrat endorsed it. Barring a mass exodus among Republicans, it is likely to pass Tuesday as long as the GOP sticks together on the procedural “rule” to call the vote.
“We need to get the Government open, and I hope all Republicans and Democrats will join me in supporting this Bill, and send it to my desk WITHOUT DELAY. There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” Trump wrote on social media Monday.
That’s important because nearly all Republicans — except Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — have proven malleable to Trump’s demands if he piles on the pressure.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., meanwhile, declined to say Monday whether he will vote for the bill, saying only that House Democrats have “a variety of perspectives” on it and that he’ll discuss it with his team.
“We had a caucus meeting yesterday,” Jeffries told reporters. “There was a diversity of perspectives about how to move forward on this particular bill.”
The bill, which passed the Senate 71-29, would complete funding for the government to the tune of more than $1 trillion — except DHS, which will carry on with a two-week stopgap bill as Democrats demand guardrails on immigration enforcement operations.
Senior House Democrats are divided over the bill.
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, which oversees DHS, led a letter with 12 Democrats calling on colleagues to reject the bill.
“Democrats must act now to demand real changes that protect our communities before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receive another dollar in funding,” Thompson and the other Democrats wrote. “This is what our constituents elected us to do — to hold ICE and this administration accountable when they fail to adhere to the Constitution or follow the law.”
But Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Monday in the Rules Committee that she “will support this package.”
She said the short-term DHS measure “gives us time and it gives us leverage to secure the protections that we need for our communities.”
“If we do not do that, we will not be able to bring the kinds of pressure that is necessary to make sure that ICE does not continue to terrorize our communities,” DeLauro added.
Over the weekend, Democrat Christian Menefee won a special election in a safe blue Houston-area district, cutting the GOP margin in the House to 218-214. That means Johnson will now have a one-vote margin for defection to pass bills without Democratic help.
But DeLauro’s remarks indicate that at least some Democrats will vote for the measure, which would fund most of the government through Sept. 30 and set a new Feb. 13 deadline to fund DHS or shut down just that department.
That’s where things will get much more complicated.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the White House would negotiate, suggesting Republicans will accept what Trump agrees to. But he cautioned that some of the Democratic demands will be difficult for the GOP to swallow.
The Democratic demands include putting body cameras on agents, a move that DHS announced Monday, as well as requiring judicial warrants, sending CBP back to the border and forcing officers to wear identification and show their faces — without masks — in conducting operations.
“Obviously, there will be some back-and-forth and give-and-take on it,” Thune told NBC News on Monday. “The issue of masks is a very controversial one. The issue of ‘sanctuary’ cities is also a very controversial one. So we’ll see where it goes. But as I said before, it’s going to be really important that the White House and the Senate Democrats be negotiating this.”
