Travel disruptions deepened as senators raced to salvage a proposal to end the Homeland Security shutdown by funding much of the department, including airport workers going without pay, but excluding immigration operations that have been core to the dispute.
The sudden sense of urgency comes as U.S. airports are snarled by long security lines, with travelers being told to arrive hours before their flights in Houston, Atlanta and Baltimore/Washington International.
Routine Department of Homeland Security funding was halted in mid-February ahead of the busy spring travel season.
Nearly 11% of Transportation Security Administration workers who were scheduled to report for duty Monday – more than 3,200 – missed work, and at least 458 have quit altogether since the shutdown began, according to DHS.
[Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.] Any time you promise something you can’t possibly deliver, you have to be held accountable, to be honest with you. There was no path for the SAVE Act in its current form. I support voter ID. I’ve got voter ID bills with my signature on it as Speaker of the House. It was a priority for me. But this bill is not ready for prime time. It doesn’t address absentee ballot voting in a way that many Republican states would like for it to.
[Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Il.] I’m telling you, the SAVE Act is not going to pass currently. They have to change the rules of the Senate for that to happen.
[Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fl.]There’s nothing in there that’s going to help get the Save America Act passed. I mean, we’re busting our butt to do what the public wants us to do. We’ve got to secure our elections. We need to secure our border. We need to get criminals out of our country. We’ve got to secure our elections. We’ve got to do all those things together.
[Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.] I’m open to every means available to us to make sure that our elections are secure. And so if that takes the shape of reconciliation, that’s an option. But I think we need to spend the requisite time on it to get it done. Again, even the broader package, these are all 80-20, 90-10 issues. And so I’m hopeful that we can find a path.
[Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.] What I think we ought to do is let everybody have input in how to draft the resolution to make sure the SAVE Act passes muster. But we also need to go hire some talent that has experience with the Budget Control Act. This has gone on between the SAVE Act and the shutdown at DHS. We’re going into well over a month, and we’re stuck. I mean, we’re talking over each other. It looks like a circus without a tent. It looks like the Hindenburg ran into the Titanic. I mean, we’re not making progress here.
Efforts to end the standoff stalled when Trump linked any deal to his push to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, a strict proof-of-citizenship and voter ID bill that has stalled in the Senate ahead of the midterm elections.
Some GOP senators have pitched him on the idea of tackling it in another legislative package.
The White House on Tuesday stressed that conversations were ongoing. But it also said an agreement to split off immigration enforcement funding, while addressing Trump’s elections bill separately, “seems to be acceptable.”
