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| Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, joined by the department employees, during a news conference in Washington, Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. A partial shutdown of the Homeland Security Department loomed at week’s end, but no solution was in sight as senators returned to the Capitol from a week-long recess Monday to confront an impasse over the issue. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- President Barack Obama warned Monday that states will feel the
pain of a Homeland Security Department shutdown if Congress can't break
an impasse by week's end. But on Capitol Hill, no solution was in sight.
"It
will have a direct impact on your economy, and it will have a direct
impact on America's national security," Obama told the nation's
governors as they visited the White House as part of their annual
conference. With tens of thousands of workers in line to be furloughed
if the agency shuts down at midnight Friday, and many more forced to
work without pay, the president cast the standoff in starkly economic
terms.
"These are folks who, if they don't
have a paycheck, are not going to be able to spend that money in your
states," the president said. "And as governors, you know that we can't
afford to play politics with our national security."
The
president's words appeared to have little impact on Capitol Hill, where
Senate Republicans lined up a fourth procedural vote on House-passed
legislation that funds the Homeland Security Department through the
Sept. 30 end of the budget year, while also rolling back Obama's
executive actions granting work permits to millions of immigrants in
this country illegally.
The outcome of Monday
evening's vote was expected to be the same as three other attempts
earlier this month, when Senate Democrats lined up to block the
legislation from advancing. Democrats say they won't agree to the bill
unless the GOP-written immigration provisions are removed.
The
stalemate on Capitol Hill also appeared unchanged by a federal judge's
ruling last week that said Obama's executive actions exceeded his
authority and put them on hold just as the first wave of immigrants,
tens of thousands brought here illegally as children, were to begin
applying for work permits and deportation deferrals.
The
Obama administration on Monday asked U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen
in Brownsville, Texas, to put his ruling on hold and filed a notice of
appeal of his ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New
Orleans.
The legal developments increased
calls from a few Republican senators to pass a "clean" Homeland Security
bill without the contested language on immigration.
"I
hope my House colleagues will understand that our best bet is to
challenge this in court, that if we don't fund the Department of
Homeland Security, we'll get blamed as a party," Sen. Lindsey Graham,
R-S.C., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
But
House Republicans said they had no interest in revisiting the issue
after passing a $39.7 billion bill last month that funds the department
through Sept. 30, the end of the budget year, while also undoing Obama's
actions on immigration. Instead, they insisted that the Senate must
act.
"A federal judge has confirmed that what
we've done is the right thing," conservative Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio
said Monday. "I hope that the U.S. Senate can see the light and do the
right thing."
A short-term extension of
current funding levels remained possible, but lawmakers had only a few
days to come up with even that partial solution before the agency's
funding expires.
A Homeland Security shutdown
would result in some 30,000 administrative and other workers getting
furloughed. Some 200,000 others would fall into essential categories and
stay on the job at agencies like the Border Patrol, Secret Service and
Transportation Security Administration, though mostly without drawing a
paycheck until the situation is resolved.
Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson argued over the weekend that the
furloughs could harm the U.S. response to terrorist threats and
warnings, such as the one late Saturday on Minnesota's Mall of America.
Some 80 percent of Federal Emergency Management Agency workers would be
furloughed even as that agency contends with two months of devastating
snowfall and cold from New England to the Mountain States, Johnson said.
But
some Republicans have argued that because the large majority of agency
staff would keep working, albeit without getting paid, the harmful
impacts of a shutdown were being exaggerated.
