WASHINGTON – With members of Congress eager to leave town soon for spring break, lawmakers in the Senate unanimously passed a bill on March 27 to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, securing a path to ending the six-week-long shutdown that has left airports in turmoil.
The eleventh-hour agreement provides money for all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It still has to pass the House of Representatives before going to the president's desk.
The late-night dealmaking came after President Donald Trump said earlier in the evening that he would pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers with or without the help of Congress. As hundreds of temporarily unpaid TSA workers have resigned since the shutdown started, and more have increasingly called off the job, wait times in airport security lines have hit historic highs in recent days.
Speaking from the Senate floor after 2 a.m., a weary and frustrated Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, said Trump should "never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers."
"Republicans funded the Department of Homeland Security piecemeal. It's not the way to fund the department," he said. "But we were out of time."
