CFR Update 2/26 Deadline Looms Over Homeland Security Funding

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Daily News Brief February 26, 2015

Top of the Agenda Deadline Looms Over Homeland Security Funding A deal (Reuters) brokered on Wednesday ended a partisan deadlock in the Senate on Department of Homeland Security funding, in a bid to avert a partial government shutdown. Senate Democrats agreed to back Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) proposal to vote on a 'clean' bill (Hill) that only considers funding for the department. The bill’s future remains uncertain in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The stalemate over Homeland Security funding emerged as a proxy fight over President Barack Obama's immigration reform plans; House Republicans have put forth legislation aimed at preventing DHS funding from financing Obama's executive action on immigration. Meanwhile, the White House seeks to appeal (WaPo) last week's decision by a Texas federal judge to temporarily block its executive action on immigration. Analysis "If a budget for the department isn’t approved by the end of the week, there’s only one agency in the gargantuan bureaucracy where business would largely continue to operate as usual. It happens to be the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes visa, work permit and green card applications and is the very agency responsible for accepting petitions for deferred action from deportation that the Obama administration has offered to certain unauthorized immigrants," writes the New York Times. "The best way to solve the problem of the president's continued reckless overreach is not by throwing the men and women of DHS into limbo, but for Congress to do its job and pass real reforms to fix our broken immigration system. We need a smart, simple and nimble visa, green card and citizenship system that gives workers of all skill levels a legal and safe means to come here and contribute to our economy." argues Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ) at USA Today. "Increasingly, Republicans who use illegal immigration as a wedge issue are at odds not just with the Obama administration, Democrats and Hispanics; they are also at odds with majorities of Americans in every region of the nation. That’s a recipe for political marginalization," warns the Washington Post.