Top Senate Republicans push plan to end DHS shutdown, but obstacles remain
By Sarah Ferris, Morgan Rimmer, Ted Barrett, Alison Main, CNN
(CNN) — Top Senate Republicans are desperately seeking a way out of the nearly 40-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Yet they’re struggling to sell their plan to top Democrats — and even President Donald Trump refuses to say he’s fully on board.
GOP leaders, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, have insisted that their party is unified behind their strategy, which key Republicans pitched to Trump in a Monday night meeting at the White House. Their plan: Fund all of DHS except a small portion of the immigration enforcement budget, in a concession to Democrats. Then, once that’s passed, Republicans would attempt to muscle through a partisan bill without Democratic votes to fund the rest of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — as well as new policies in the president’s long-sought voter ID bill.
But Trump offered a pessimistic assessment of the plan Tuesday afternoon — saying “any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy” — just as top Democrats were insisting that they’d need more to support the plan as well.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday signaled it’s not enough for his party — telling CNN he will not accept the GOP offer and instead plans to ask for more.
“We’re looking at their proposal and we will have a counter offer,” Schumer said.
GOP leaders, however, have made clear Democrats can’t seek reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they’re unwilling to fund the agency.
“If you are not going to have funding, I don’t know how all of a sudden you can demand reforms,” Thune told reporters Tuesday.
Pressure is intensifying for Congress to reach a deal and end hours-long security lines at airports. But the remarks from Trump and top Democrats appear to have now muddled the chances of a quick agreement.
Some close to Senate GOP leadership still believe they can secure a funding deal to reopen the shuttered DHS with enough votes from both parties. Thune and his team have spent days persuading their own party — including Trump — to get behind a deal amid the intensifying pressure of hours-long security lines at airports. And they believe there are enough frustrated Democrats to help deliver the votes.
Senate Democrats met midday to discuss their next steps, with multiple senators making clear they backed their leader’s position even as they said they sought more details about the emerging GOP deal.
“I’d like to see us get some reforms,” Sen. Chris Coons, a senior Democratic spending leader, said, referring to ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the department’s investigative arm. “I’d like us to get some reforms that mean we don’t have roving bands of masked unnamed agents grabbing people off the street or policing sensitive spaces. And there have been reasonable offers and good discussions on both sides.”
While Trump had previously rejected a similar idea, top Republicans felt the president was on board, two people familiar with the discussions told CNN.
A White House official expressed optimism in a statement to CNN on Tuesday, saying, “Conversations are ongoing but this deal seems to be acceptable.”
Trump has repeatedly vacillated on his position on the shutdown and his legislative priority, the elections overhaul bill. The president has in recent days said that he does not want to make a deal on DHS funding unless Democrats back legislation known as the “SAVE America Act” – despite the fact that supporting the bill is a nonstarter for Democrats. (Trump was presented Sunday with a proposal to fund every part of the department except enforcement operations by ICE, two sources familiar with the conversations told CNN, but Trump rejected the idea as he took to Truth Social to attack Democrats for not backing the voter ID bill.)
If Senate Democrats do agree, it could put Congress on a path to ending the nearly 40-day shutdown of DHS that has left federal workers, like TSA officers, without pay. The funding deal would still need to go to the House, where GOP leaders would need to navigate a tight majority. Then Republicans would face an arduous few weeks crafting another major immigration bill — with both ICE funding and pieces of Trump’s contentious voter ID bill — all just months before a critical midterm election.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a senior Democrat, said he believed funding DHS without that money for ICE enforcement would be the “easiest way” forward.
“Let’s keep working on ICE [reforms] and let’s open everything else up,” Murphy said. “As I leave tonight, that still seems like the most likely path this week.”
Democratic Sen. Peter Welch said he is eager to get the shutdown resolved, adding that Democrats have already made significant strides by helping to force former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem out of a job, as well as other changes.
He said Democrats have already made significant strides by helping to force former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem out of a job as well as other changes.
“The fact is, we’ve made significant progress. Noem is gone. That’s a big deal. She was reckless, lawless, corrupt. That’s big progress. Number two, ICE is out of Minneapolis. We owe that basically, to the brave citizens in Minneapolis who, in the face of enormous violence, stood up to protect their neighbors. And then you’re seeing out of the White House an acknowledgement that this mass roundup policy is way over the top.”
Thune was upbeat but cautious Monday evening about the possibility of getting a deal to soon to end the shutdown. He said he “feels good” about the emerging agreement but said he’s a bit of a “naysayer” until everything is nailed down.
“All I can say is that the discussions have been very positive and productive and I hopefully headed in the right direction.”
This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.
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CNN’s Lauren Fox and Kit Maher contributed to this report.
