First the good news: Congress appears to have found a way to avoid a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security for the next three weeks.

Now the bad: March is beginning to look awfully grim for the new Republican Congress that had lofty expectations for legislating in 2015.


GOP leaders appear set to win approval of their short-term solution to the DHS impasse on Friday, hours before the money runs dry. But that will leave the House and Senate just three weeks to bridge their fundamental differences on funding the department for the long term and blocking President Barack Obama’s changes to the enforcement of immigration policy.

On top of that, Congress must update a complicated Medicare reimbursement formula for doctors. And it needs to pass a budget.

The coming March logjam represents a major failure for the Republican Congress. GOP leaders vowed to avoid them, but legislative cliffs are back.

But the most immediate tripwire — Friday’s DHS deadline — may be removed, now that Speaker John Boehner and the House Republican leadership have convinced their rank-and-file to fund the department for three weeks, or risk having the Senate’s clean, year-long funding bill jammed down their throats.

After leadership whipped the bill Thursday evening, they were confident their short-term plan would get through the House. House Democrats are whipping against the bill, which means GOP leadership must pass the bill with mostly its own members.

If a short-term bill is what the Senate is left with, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may be left with no other option than to take Boehner’s plan. If the Senate backs the House’s stop-gap, the funding deadline will shift from Friday night to March 19.

On Friday, the House is slated to vote on a three-week DHS spending bill alongside separate language that would attempt to force formal negotiations between an already-passed House bill, which would gut President Barack Obama’s ability to shield millions from deportation, and the Senate’s funding bill, which is silent on those executive actions and runs through September. The Senate’s legislation is set to pass on Friday after a breakneck deal to speed up votes.

If the House succeeds in pushing two legislative vehicles — one to fund DHS, and the other to enter into conference with the upper chamber — the Senate will probably swallow the stop-gap funding bill while rejecting the conference request because of nearly uniform Democratic opposition. That scenario would keep DHS funded but prolong the fight over Obama’s immigration policies. And it could force the House into eventually passing the Senate’s long-term bill, which lawmakers in both parties argue is better policy than a short-term bill.

House Republicans were confident coming out of their closed meeting, as a number of conservatives expressed support for leadership’s plans. Key figures like Texas Rep. John Carter — the chairman of the subcommittee that handles DHS’s budget — favored the plan, as did conservatives like Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling and Florida Rep. Ted Yoho, according to sources in the room. Freshman Arizona Rep. Martha McSally said she was elected to get things done, not shut things down. McSally said she is a former fighter pilot, but not a kamikaze pilot.

A small clutch of hardline Republicans advocated for negotiating while DHS was shut down.

Though the Senate is moving to pass a more comprehensive, year-long funding bill, a short-term bill does have support from Senate Republicans. Asked if the Senate would accept a stopgap measure if that’s what passes the House, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied: “And the alternative is cutting off funding? Sure. [But] then we’re back in this again and again, and that to me is not desirable.”

This punt by the House is, in part, a way to show that the chamber’s GOP leadership still has some fight left. But it also ensures Congress will have spent all of February and a chunk of March on debating the funding of DHS.

In practical terms, it’s not clear what a short-term bill would accomplish, beyond allowing a brief respite from a shutdown of DHS. It would do nothing to resolve the fundamental dispute over immigration. And temporary funding bill would also disrupt the agenda of Senate Republicans, since it can take weeks to complete a single bill. In the meantime, a federal court in Texas has already delayed Obama’s immigration order, but Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that he favors Congress exerting its authority as well.

The House’s plan came after Obama vowed to veto any bill that hampers his ability to change the enforcement of immigration laws, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took a hard line in opposition to debating GOP legislation that seeks to handcuff the president or go to conference with the Senate.

“If they send over a bill with all the riders in it, they’ve shut down the government. We’re not going to play games,” Reid said at a joint news conference with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday morning.

In addition to passing a DHS funding bill, the Senate will also try to pass a bill aimed at blocking Obama’s broad 2014 action on immigration. Senate Democrats say they are open to debating that bill — penned by by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) — but they appear eager to turn it into a debate on comprehensive immigration reform, rather than executive overreach. And they say they won’t vote to debate it until the House funds DHS through September.

Senate conservatives were key to avoiding a shutdown of DHS. If they fought McConnell’s proposal for a clean bill, a vote could have been delayed until Sunday. But the procedural logjam began to clear as the party’s right flank indicated they would not block the deal for swift votes.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a relentless critic of the administration’s immigration actions, indicated he would not throw procedural roadblocks in front of McConnell’s proposal, as did Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). Both voted against even proceeding to McConnell’s plan on Wednesday.

“I think it’s appropriate to move forward with the bill,” Sessions said. “The ideas about how this process will go forward seem to be firmed up. I’m not happy with them. But I’m not interested in delaying merely for the sake of delay.”

At his own press conference Thursday, Boehner insisted that Republicans in the two chambers aren’t at odds despite their completely divergent strategies.

“It is not a fight among Republicans,” Boehner said. “All Republicans agree we want to fund the Department of Homeland Security and we want to stop the president’s executive actions with regard to immigration.”

House conservatives are watching Boehner’s next move closely, urging him not to put a “clean” DHS funding bill up for a vote if the Senate sends one to him as expected. He playfully made a kissing sound to a reporter who asked if he would. “When I make decisions I’ll let you know,” Boehner joked.

As for whether his speakership could be challenged, Boehner responded, ”No, heavens sakes, no. Not at all.”

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.