House DHS spending bill will likely be blocked in the Senate

The Senate is poised to vote Tuesday on a Department of Homeland Security spending bill that includes amendments to roll back President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, but the bill stands almost no chance of passing.

The $39.7 billion DHS spending bill, which the GOP-controlled House already passed, is unlikely to get the 60 votes necessary to clear a Democratic filibuster when it comes up for a procedural vote on Tuesday.

SEE ALSO: White House issues veto threat on DHS funding bill

Senate Democrats say they’ll block the bill if it includes the GOP-proposed immigration amendments. Among those amendments is one that would block Obama’s recent actions to defer deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants. Another one would undo the president’s 2012 deferred action program that gives temporary protection from deportation and work permits to undocumented youth.

“We are united as a caucus, and we are going to work to stop this strategy that hurts young people and those who will be protected by the president’s second executive order,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, said on Friday.

Still, Republicans in the Senate are pushing forward with the vote set for Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Friday that the DHS spending bill “would do two things: fund the Department of Homeland Security, and rein-in executive overreach,”

“There’s no reason for Democrats to block it,” he said.

If the DHS spending bill fails to pass in the Senate, it will be sent back to the House. Republicans will then have to decide if they want to remove the immigration amendments or risk a partial shutdown of DHS at the end of February, when the agency is set to run out of funds.

SEE ALSO: Immigrants can begin applying for expanded DACA on Feb. 18

In a speech unveiling his fiscal year 2016 budget request on Monday, Obama criticized congressional Republicans for threatening to let funding for DHS expire all because they disagree with his actions on immigration. He also urged them to reverse their plans to use the DHS funding bill to try to block his executive actions on immigration.

“If they don’t agree with me, that’s fine. That’s how our democracy works,” Obama said, referring to Republicans in Congress. “But don’t jeopardize our national security over this disagreement.”

The president also talked about what would happen if Congress fails to pass a DHS spending bill. He said DHS employees whose work is considered essential would still report to work, but they wouldn’t get paid. That includes more than 40,000 Border Patrol officers and Customs and Border Protection agents. It also includes an additional 13,000 immigration officers, as well as more than 50,000 airport screeners and more than 40,000 men and women in the Coast Guard.

“These Americans aren’t just working to keep us safe, they have to take care of their own families,” Obama said. “The notion that they would get caught up in a disagreement around policy that has nothing to do with them makes no sense.”

SEE ALSO: What Loretta Lynch said on immigration that has people talking

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