Analyst: DHS Impasse All About GOP Infighting

WASHINGTON — US senators are mulling a GOP leader's plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but one analyst says Republican infighting could lead to an agency shutdown.

With DHS funding to expire Friday night, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday evening announced a potential way forward. He said in a statement he would introduce a bill targeting the White House's recent immigration action that the chamber could vote on separately from a DHS appropriations bill.

"Now, my preference is still to debate and pass the funding legislation that's currently before us. It's already passed the House," McConnell said. "It's the simplest and easiest way forward. And if Democrats think it needs to be amended, I'm sure they'll try to do that. They just need to let us bring it to the floor first.

"But as long as Democrats continue to prevent us from even doing that, the new bill I described offers another option we can turn to," he said. "It's another way to get the Senate unstuck from a Democrat filibuster and move the debate forward."

But that measure also contains the aforementioned controversial immigration policy riders, which lack the requisite amount of votes to pass the Senate. The standoff has DHS slipping toward a shutdown at week's end.

Stan Collender, a longtime federal budget analyst, says, "it has become increasingly obvious over the past week that the reason for the stalemate between House and Senate Republicans over the DHS appropriation … has less to do with the publicly stated reason — stopping the president's executive orders on immigration — and far more to do with the 2016 congressional election."

He writes that far-right congressional Republicans see a Homeland Security shutdown as a badge of honor that will help their re-election campaigns.

"A shutdown will demonstrate a take-no-prisoners attitude to the militantly conservative, very anti-Democrat and overwhelmingly anti-Obama constituents who vote in the primary or whose support will make a primary unnecessary," Collender writes.

"To these GOP House members, a shutdown is not something to be avoided," he said, "it's one of the first scheduled events in their 2016 re-election campaigns."

Legislatively, this creates problems for Republican leaders because around 12 of the 24 GOP senators up for re-election in 2016 hail from Democratic states, meaning they cannot discount voters from that party.

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"And, as of now," he writes, "the last option is looking more likely than it has at any time since the short-term Department of Homeland Security appropriation was put in place when the fiscal year began."

The House GOP-crafted bill also has received a veto threat from the White House.

The lower chamber's DHS-funding measure contains billions for defense sector-supplied Coast Guard hardware, like national security cutter ships, HC-130J aircraft acquisitions and maintenance, H-60 helicopter re-manufacturing, and other programs.

"Unreliable funding jeopardizes aircraft, cutter and boat maintenance and operations," the Coast Guard said in a Monday statement.

"Also in the event of a lapse in appropriations, nearly $1 billion in acquisition and maintenance contracts will continue to be deferred or otherwise disrupted — reducing the long-term operational availability and effectiveness of the Coast Guard," the service said. "These delays erode the security of our maritime borders."

email: jbennett@defensenews.com

Twitter:@bennettjohnt

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