DPA/AFP/Reuters/Washington
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) got a one-week extension of funding just before the midnight deadline ran out.
At issue was Republican opposition to Democratic President Barack Obama’s executive action last year to protect about 5mn illegal immigrants from deportation.
A compromise “clean” bill that does not force Obama to shut down his relief programme was approved by both the Senate and House of Representatives and sent to Obama for signature.
Obama signed the bill yesterday, the White House said.
The bill only extends funding for seven days.
Most Republicans want to withhold funds for the DHS until Obama drops the programme that provides immigrant relief.
A federal judge has already suspended the programme, and the Obama administration has appealed.
The one-week extension is intended to provide time to find a compromise, but it is uncertain if that is possible.
Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of Congress, but fall short of the extraordinary majority needed in the Senate to adopt legislation.
At one point, the two sides were unable to agree on a three-week extension.
Representative Steve Israel, a Democrat, quipped that “terrorists don’t plan their attacks on a three-week budget” and it was dangerous for the country’s anti-terrorism programme to do so.
The DHS is responsible for screening passengers at US airports and other security duties, but it also includes the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service and is responsible for other immigration-related and security services.
House and Senate members had scrambled to prevent the agency securing the United States against terror threats from running out of money at midnight.
Earlier attempts to secure comprehensive funding failed spectacularly on Friday.
With the clock ticking, the House of Representatives passed the seven-day measure 357 to 60, with just two hours to spare. The Senate approved it earlier by voice vote.
Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi suggested congressional leaders agreed to a deal that would see Democrats help get the one-week stopgap over the finish line, in return for a vote next week on full funding.
“Your vote tonight will assure that we will vote for full funding next week,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues.
If Congress did not pass legislation that allows money to flow, 30,000 DHS employees would be furloughed, while some 200,000 agency staff, including border agents, airport screeners and Secret Service agents would be ordered to work without pay.
“It’s the 11th hour, and we must act” to fund the agency that defends “our home turf”, Republican Harold Rogers, the top House appropriator, told his colleagues.
The Senate approved a “clean” DHS funding bill on Friday free of controversial amendments sought by House Republicans to block Obama’s immigration executive orders.
But House Speaker John Boehner, under pressure from his party’s right-wing, refused to put the measure to a vote.
Then, in one of the harshest rebukes of Boehner’s four-year tenure as speaker, more than 50 House conservatives joined Democrats in rejecting a three-week extension.
Republican leaders kept that 15-minute vote open for nearly an hour as they sought to corral support, but conservatives were not budging.
They wanted Boehner and others to stand firm by demanding the amendments repealing the immigration plan, which would provide deportation relief for millions of illegal immigrants, be kept in the DHS funding measure.
Many have sought to use Congress’s power of the purse to rein in what they see as Obama’s executive overreach.
“Please. I know party divisions run deep, but stand with us for the Constitution,” Republican Louie Gohmert pleaded to his House colleagues.
But Pelosi shot back that it was time for Republicans to “grow up, bite the bullet” and agree to responsibly debate immigration at a different time.
The near-fiasco over DHS funding marked a blow to the Republican leaders who control both chambers of Congress and who pledged when they took over in January to run Capitol Hill more efficiently.
“The Republican Congress has shown that it simply cannot govern,” top Senate Democrat Harry Reid said. “Two months into the Republican Congress, we are already staring a homeland security shutdown square in the face, even as terrorists around the world threaten to strike America.”
Created after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the DHS is a super-agency that encompasses the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration and immigration, customs and emergency management authorities.



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