Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed to try to pass the House’s Homeland Security spending bill that defunds President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, conservatives are worried that the defunding amendments will ultimately be stripped from the Senate’s funding bill.
On Wednesday, the House attached two amendments to defund Obama’s most recent executive amnesty and his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to the Homeland Security spending bill.
“We’re going to try to pass it,” McConnell reportedly said of that bill on Thursday. “We’ll see what happens. If we’re unable to do that, then we’ll let you know what comes next.”
If Republicans cannot get six Democrats to join them to break a potential filibuster, National Journal noted that “conservatives are worried that McConnell, who has vowed to maintain funding for the Department of Homeland Security, will pass a clean funding bill without any language restricting the administration’s actions on immigration.”
If McConnell cannot get the votes for the House bill, two GOP Senators clearly indicated that they did not want to see more shutdown “drama.”
Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and John Cornyn (R-TX) reportedly said they did not want to see a “shutdown threat,” with Cornyn reportedly saying that would be “off the table.”
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security does not expire until the end of February, but Republican leaders may have started the process on the spending bill early in anticipation of the hurdles they would in trying to defund Obama’s executive amnesty.
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