House Republicans are considering a three-week stopgap bill to temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security beyond a Friday midnight deadline and prevent the agency’s shutdown, the Washington Post reported Thursday.Sean Sullivan writes that the lawmakers intend to use the measure to give more time for a possible conference to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the DHS spending bill.
The report said delays in the final vote for long-term DHS funding are due to disagreements on provisions that are intended to block President Barack Obama’s directives on immigration.
The Senate plans to reject a conference with the lower chamber to negotiate the provisions, Sullivan reports.
Erin Kelly of USA Today reports that both parties in the Senate have reached a compromise and agreed to pass a DHS spending bill without the provisions on immigration.
Senate Republicans who oppose the measure do not plan to use “procedural moves” to delay voting for DHS funding, the report said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who proposed the compromise, indicated that a separate bill will cover action on the president’s directives.
“We have two different institutions that don’t have the same body temperature every day and so we tend to try and work to narrow the differences,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the press about the impasse between the House and Senate bills.
