As Senate Majority Leader John Thune hashed out a deal aimed at ending the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, he may have thought Democrats were its biggest threat.<\/p>\n
Instead, his fellow Republicans across the Capitol were the ones to tank it.<\/p>\n
Now, instead of blaming Democrats for prolonging the shutdown, GOP leadership in the House and Senate are pointing fingers at each other. And it\u2019s deepening fissures that were already forming between them ahead of the midterm elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Friday, the House passed<\/a> an eight-week funding extension for the department \u2014 a direct rebuke to the Senate\u2019s solution, passed in the wee hours of Friday morning via voice vote<\/a>, to fund all of DHS for the rest of the fiscal year save Immigration and Customs Enforcement and most of Customs and Border Protection.<\/p>\n Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., dismissed the Senate measure as a \u201cgambit\u201d and a \u201cjoke.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m quite convinced that it can\u2019t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThe reason that we can\u2019t accept this ridiculousness is because we\u2019re not going to risk not funding the agencies that keep the American people safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson stopped short of publicly criticizing the South Dakota Senate majority leader, insisting\u00a0 Senate Democrats were the \u201cengineers.\u201d But Senate Republicans control which bills go to the floor, and not one Republican senator objected to the bill\u2019s passage.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beyond policy concerns, House members also said they were tired of the Senate jamming them. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., said Friday that the Senate \u201cdidn\u2019t talk with us\u201d before passing the bill \u201cat 3 in the morning when Americans are sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur speaker is very unhappy. I\u2019m not happy \u2026 what the Senate did was, frankly, not right,\u201d Emmer said on Fox News later that day.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, you know, when he\u2019s got the whole Scottish army behind him and the English and Longshanks are there on the other side. He looks off to the right, and there the lords are riding away because they\u2019ve cut a deal with the enemy on the battlefield. So that\u2019s disappointing,\u201d said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla. \u201cThat\u2019s not the way colleagues treat one another \u2026 I do think, at the leadership level, that was inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n One leadership aide said talks are ongoing between members, the chambers and the White House. But the disconnect between the chambers remains clear.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, we\u2019ve got a dilemma,\u201d Johnson told<\/a> \u201cFox and Friends\u201d on Tuesday. \u201cThe outrage and the reason we were so upset [is] because they sent us a bill that literally put the number zero in the bill for the funding of border security and customs and immigration enforcement. We can\u2019t do that. That was the biggest issue in the 2024 election.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Republicans had an opportunity to use Monday\u2019s pro forma session to try to clear the eight-week continuing resolution by unanimous consent. But no Republican made such a request \u2014 and it likely wouldn\u2019t have had the backing of all senators, including Democrats, to succeed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought that [the continuing resolution] would be passed by unanimous consent on Monday and it didn\u2019t happen in the Senate,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., presided over Monday\u2019s session, which lasted less than 60 seconds. He said the Senate sent its \u201cbill over [to the House] because it was set up so that if some Republicans wanted to vote no, they could have voted no.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut ultimately, we think it would have passed,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle said they were perplexed by the House\u2019s choice to pass a CR, which was never considered a viable option out of the shutdown for senators.<\/p>\n \u201cThe House is House-ing right now,\u201d a Senate leadership aide quipped on Friday evening.<\/p>\n \u2018Stepping on rakes\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n House GOP leadership has since redirected its shutdown rebukes back to Senate Democrats. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., posted<\/a> on social media Monday reminding his followers that the shutdown is \u201con Schumer and Democrats.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Thune and other Senate Republican leaders have defended their bill as a way to end the shutdown without giving in to Democratic demands. They\u2019ve also argued that additional funding for the two immigration agencies would come through a separate budget reconciliation bill in coming weeks that avoids the risk of a Democratic filibuster.<\/p>\n But some House GOP members won\u2019t let Thune off so easily.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said, \u201cThe Senate right now is just having issues with stepping on rakes left and right.\u201d<\/p>\n The interchamber frustration extends beyond the current shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rank-and-file members are growing increasingly frustrated about other policy-related issues that are brewing.<\/p>\n The biggest point of tension between House and Senate Republicans over the past weeks has been over the GOP\u2019s voter ID bill dubbed the SAVE America Act. Party firebrands like Luna have criticized Thune for not passing the bill, which he doesn\u2019t have the votes under current procedure to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n Luna and others have urged Thune to employ a so-called talking filibuster \u2014 a procedure that could eat up months of floor time \u2014 or abolish the filibuster altogether in order to try to pass the bill with a simple majority instead of a 60-vote threshold. Thune refused, opting instead to do a pared-down extended debate on the legislation.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe Senate is absolutely, just totally incompetent,\u201d Luna said in an interview.<\/p>\n Paired with the shutdown snafu, the fights do not bode well for a united GOP legislative agenda ahead of the midterms.<\/p>\n \u201cI respect the House. The House wants to be treated with respect,\u201d Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters earlier this month. \u201cI do think the tension is overblown. Not saying it\u2019s not there, but it\u2019s overblown.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The fight over the voter ID bill is likely to also bleed into negotiations for a second reconciliation bill<\/a> in the weeks ahead as a vehicle to pass the voter ID bill. Andpressure regarding the filibuster from the White House isn\u2019t making things easier for Thune.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a shame,\u201d President Donald Trump said<\/a> Sunday of the Senate\u2019s DHS bill. \u201cThey should really just go to a filibuster. They should terminate the filibuster and they should vote, that\u2019s what I think.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think the Senate is playing \u2026 it too soft,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n With no solid solution to the shutdown in sight, it has become increasingly clear that despite controlling Congress and the White House, GOP leadership may have to ease some intraparty tension between the chambers before they can get anything done.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, other legislative deadlines and priorities threaten to further strain relations<\/a> between the chambers, including extending<\/a> Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Leaders hope to pass a measure before the statutory authority expires April 20.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Another issue that has received headlines is a push from House Republicans, led by Luna, to curb lawmakers\u2019 stock trading.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Senate needs a serious cleaning. We can\u2019t tolerate this type of corruption,\u201d Luna said. \u201cThey are literally taking issues like banning insider trading, voter ID, 80-20 issues, and they are doing everything they can\u201d to not pass them, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat is bullshit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nina Heller and Aris Folley contributed to this report.<\/p>\n The day Speaker Mike Johnson spoke to \u201cFox and Friends\u201d was corrected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Senate Majority Leader John Thune hashed out a deal aimed at ending the Department of Homeland Security…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[1060,1061,959,1062,477,1063,486,490,1064,12,883,1065,1066,1067,96,1068,961,493,1069,1070,475,1071,483,1072,478,1048,1073,1074,1075,1076,494,1077,1078],"class_list":{"0":"post-729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mike-johnson","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-appropriations","10":"tag-army","11":"tag-budget","12":"tag-congress","13":"tag-continuing-resolution","14":"tag-democrats","15":"tag-department-of-homeland-security","16":"tag-donald-j-trump","17":"tag-donald-trump","18":"tag-election","19":"tag-elections","20":"tag-executive-branch","21":"tag-filibuster","22":"tag-florida","23":"tag-homeland-security","24":"tag-house","25":"tag-immigration","26":"tag-intelligence","27":"tag-john-hoeven","28":"tag-john-thune","29":"tag-leadership","30":"tag-louisiana","31":"tag-media","32":"tag-mike-johnson","33":"tag-minnesota","34":"tag-north-dakota","35":"tag-oklahoma","36":"tag-policy","37":"tag-republicans","38":"tag-senate","39":"tag-south-dakota","40":"tag-steve-scalise"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116327476285527891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}