Senate negotiators are delaying consideration of a full-year budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as both sides struggle to find a bipartisan agreement.
The powerful Senate Appropriations Committee is working to pass all 12 full-year bills and is scheduled to take up the bill Thursday along with four other full-year budget measures.
“Over the past few weeks, we have made great progress in crafting strong, bipartisan funding bills, with seven bills passing through committee to date with overwhelming bipartisan support,” the committee’s chair, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said in a statement Monday.
“We want to keep the momentum going as we take up four more bills on Thursday, and we will continue to work toward a bipartisan agreement on a homeland security bill,” she added.
Congress has about two months left to end the government shutdown before it expires in late September.
The Senate has yet to unanimously pass a budget bill, but the House has passed five budget bills for fiscal year 2025 so far. But the House struggled to pass several other budget bills last week and recessed a week early.
The gridlock over the Department of Homeland Security’s annual budget isn’t surprising, as it was a key issue in spending talks earlier this year after a bipartisan border deal collapsed over the winter.
Republicans have stepped up their attacks on Democrats over the border in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election. Days after Vice President Harris secured the endorsement she needed to become her party’s nominee, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a resolution denounced her as the Biden administration’s “border czar.”
