Kirk softens on 'coffins' The Illinois Republican tones down his rhetoric on the DHS standoff.

One day after threatening to pile “coffins” outside Democratic offices if the Department of Homeland Security shuts down, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said Wednesday that he would support the clean DHS funding bill that Democrats have been demanding for weeks.

Must-pass funding for DHS has been locked in a political stalemate in a dispute over President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which Republicans are trying to undo through amendments to the Homeland Security bill.


But on Wednesday, Kirk sided with Democrats who had been pushing Republicans to pass a clean funding bill without immigration riders.

“My hope is that we pass it clean now,” Kirk said Wednesday. “As the governing party, we should govern. I would think we should just pass a regular appropriations bill under regular order.”

At least in tone, Kirk’s comments were a sharp contrast from his comments to POLITICO on Tuesday, in which he blasted Senate Democrats’ behavior during the funding impasse. Democrats have filibustered the DHS legislation three times.

“The Republicans — if there is a successful attack during a DHS shutdown — we should build a number of coffins outside each Democratic office and say, ‘You are responsible for these dead Americans,’” Kirk said Tuesday.

But Kirk has also advised against the Republicans’ defunding strategy, telling POLITICO in January that doing so “leads us to a potential government shutdown scenario, which is a self-inflicted political wound for Republicans.”

Though he has not explicitly called for a clean funding bill, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has also opposed the Republican strategy of blocking Obama’s executive actions through the appropriations bill.