Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are locked in an escalating dispute over a stalled Homeland Security funding bill, with Saturday's assassination attempt against President Trump at the Washington Hilton adding new pressure to resolve the impasse.
GOP senators are urging the House to immediately pass a bill the Senate unanimously approved on March 27 that would fund most of DHS, including the Secret Service, whose officers stopped an armed assailant within feet of Trump during the attack, but House members are balking, reported The Hill.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) called House inaction "ridiculous," emphasizing that funding should have been resolved "well before this even happened" given elevated security threats from the Iran conflict. Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) warned that Secret Service employees will stop receiving paychecks this weekend after 72 days without mission funding. "We need to make this happen and we need to make it happen this week," she said.
However, Johnson rejected the Senate bill Monday, criticizing it as "haphazardly drafted." The speaker contends the measure's omission of ICE and Border Patrol funding creates a political problem, as it could appear House Republicans voted to defund those agencies, and Johnson proposed amending the bill before sending it back to the Senate.
Senate Republicans view Johnson's position as a semantic quibble that could derail the entire bill. Thune noted the Senate has already twice sent funding legislation to the House and pointed out that ICE and Border Patrol hold over $100 billion in unobligated funding from last year's budget legislation, with an additional $70 billion to $80 billion allocated through ongoing budget reconciliation.
The standoff has become "increasingly embarrassing" for Republicans, according to The Hill, adding that they have primarily blamed Democrats for the Feb. 14 funding lapse, but Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin recently observed that "the standoff is now between the two Republican leaders in the House and Senate."
Johnson previously stated he would not advance the Senate bill until reconciliation funding for ICE and Border Patrol passes.
However, that process remains incomplete, and Thune warned that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin will exhaust emergency executive authority before the lengthy reconciliation process concludes, creating additional pressure to resolve the dispute.
