House Passes DHS Funding, Clears Hurdle to Ending Shutdown

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., has succeeded in rallying his slim majority around controversial measures involving surveillance, immigration enforcement funding, and agricultural policy, successfully leading passage of the bills on Thursday.

The House voted by voice Thursday to pass the Senate’s measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security, sending the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk to end a record-long partial government shutdown. The House will recess after Thursday for a week.

On Wednesday night, after days of struggling to come to a deal, the House passed a resolution unlocking the process of budget reconciliation, allowing Republicans to fund immigration enforcement without needing Democrat votes in the Senate.

In order to do so, Republican leadership had to overcome some rank-and-file members’ complaints about a piecemeal approach to funding the Department of Homeland Security, in which Republicans would fund the agency’s non-immigration responsibilities in a separate bipartisan bill.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, an opponent of the piecemeal approach, explained to reporters why he did not demand a recorded vote on Thursday.

“If there was a vote, I would’ve voted no,” he said. “But we weren’t going to win that vote, so we decided to let it pass by voice vote.”

Roy has argued that leaving immigration funding outside of the typical bipartisan process risks a partisan targeting of funding in the future.

Final Touches

House Republicans also overcame bitter disagreements in passing a three-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

A faction of Republicans had for weeks demanded major reforms to the espionage program to prevent the surveillance of American citizens.

Leadership ultimately won them over with warrant reforms, as well as a prohibition on the development of a central bank digital currency—something privacy hawks have long argued could be used as a potential surveillance tool.

The future of the House FISA bill is uncertain in the Senate, and the surveillance authority expires at midnight.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said the House’s FISA bill is “dead on arrival” in the Senate due to the central bank digital currency ban.

Senate Republicans are attempting to advance a 45-day FISA extension.

The House would have to fast-track this bill under a process known as “suspension of the rules” with a two-thirds vote in order to meet the deadline.

This is usually forbidden on Thursdays and Fridays, but the House Rules Committee, a leadership-controlled panel, voted to make an exception this week in a resolution that passed on Thursday.

Johnson said after the DHS vote that the Senate should pass the House’s FISA bill to “check the last box,” saying they “don’t seem to have another alternative.” 

Farm Bill

Johnson’s other success was passing a massive farm bill by a 224-200 margin to revamp agricultural policy and provide assistance to farmers ahead of the midterm elections.

Several members initially objected to elements in the bill, prompting Republicans to set up several amendment votes on subjects of disagreement before the farm bill ultimately passed.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., for example, objected to language blocking state regulations of pesticide companies, and her amendment changing this provision passed 280-142.

Midwestern Republicans, hoping to score a win with corn farmers in their districts ahead of midterms, demanded that leadership work with them to build a regulatory environment more friendly to ethanol-blended gasoline, which is often derived from corn.

Thune has indicated the Senate wishes to proceed with its own farm bill.

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