Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday agreed during a meeting with the House Freedom Caucus to pass a 60-day stop-gap spending bill that funds all of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), unlike the Senate-passed package. It appears that Congress’s lower chamber will not take up the Senate-passed funding bill, which was passed in the early hours of Friday morning. House conservatives balked at the prospect of passing the Senate-passed spending package, which does not fund the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agencies.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has signaled that Republicans would likely address funding for those agencies through reconciliation, which would only need 51 votes in the Senate to pass. The Freedom Caucus said they would not support funding DHS unless provisions to enact voter ID verification, fund border patrol, and investigate child sex trafficking are included. “It’s not going to affect the airports if we don’t do this today,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) said Friday. He argued that the Senate could easily pass a revised House bill when it returns next week for a pro forma section. The Senate left for a two-week recess after it passed its Friday morning DHS funding bill.
