House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) asserted on Sunday that several senators have expressed “buyer’s remorse” regarding a recent Senate measure that allocated only partial funding to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the midst of a departmental shutdown.
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Speaking with Jonathan Karl on ABC News’s “This Week,” Scalise stated, “We actually read their bill, and, frankly, a number of senators have expressed buyer’s remorse with what they did at three in the morning. So, we looked at it.”
Critiques of the Senate’s Funding Approach
Scalise sharply criticized the Senate’s proposal, highlighting that it would effectively defund more than a quarter of DHS’s core operations. “One of the things that we had real concerns with is it actually defunds over 25 percent of the baseline operations of the Department of Homeland Security. Twenty-five percent. At a time when we’re at a heightened threat level,” he explained.
In contrast to the Senate’s action, Scalise emphasized the House’s consistent efforts to fully fund the department. “And so, we’ve passed now four bills out of the House to fully fund the department,” he noted. He added that following the Senate’s “weak offer,” the House advanced a short-term bill designed to ensure all department employees would receive their pay, despite it not being the ideal solution.
Legislative Impasse and Immigration Enforcement
The latest development saw the House on Friday approve a Republican-backed bill aimed at fully funding DHS for an eight-week period. This move came after GOP leadership in the House rejected a Senate-passed bill that notably excluded funding for critical immigration enforcement activities, including those carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.
The week leading up to Friday’s House vote was marked by significant legislative turbulence. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had previously rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise that sought to fund most of DHS but withheld money for immigration enforcement operations. Despite this, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) brought the compromise bill to the floor, where it passed by unanimous consent in the early hours of Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security has been a focal point of contention for months, largely due to former President Trump’s immigration policies. Tensions surrounding the department intensified following an incident in January, where federal immigration authorities were involved in the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
