House passes Senate DHS funding bill after Johnson reverses course on 75-day shutdown standoff
Congress took a major step toward ending the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Thursday as the White House warned hundreds of thousands of federal employees were on the...
By Fox News · Fox News
Congress took a major step toward ending the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Thursday as the White House warned hundreds of thousands of federal employees were on the verge of missing paychecks amid the 75-day funding lapse. The House of Representatives unanimously approved a Senate-passed spending measure covering most of the department’s appropriations through September. The vote came after the DHS funding measure had stalled in the lower chamber for more than a month as House Speaker Mike Johnson declined to put the bill on the floor over objections to language he said defunded law enforcement. The speaker's opposition reflected the views of many in the Republican conference, who viewed the bill as a dead letter when the Senate passed it unanimously in March. Johnson changed course this week after the White House appeared to side with the Senate and urged swift passage of the upper chamber’s bill. CHUCK SCHUMER INSISTS CALLING DHS FUNDING SHUTDOWN 'POLITICAL' POSTURING' IS 'NOT FAIR' "We’re not defying the White House," Johnson told reporters Wednesday. "Everybody understands what we're doing. We're all one team." In an internal memo sent to Hill offices and obtained by Fox News Digital, the White House warned it would not be able to pay employees starting in May if the House did not pass the Senate’s partial DHS bill. The administration since early April had been using existing funds to cover six weeks of back pay and a new pay period for DHS employees — but warned that money was quickly depleting. "If this funding is exhausted, the Administration will be unable to pay DHS personnel beginning in May, which will once again unleash havoc on air travel, leave critical law enforcement officers—including our brave Secret Service agents—and the Coast Guard without paychecks, and jeopardize national security," the memo states. Republicans are in the beginning stages of writing a separate party-line package to fund Immigration and Customs En…