A faction of House and Senate conservatives is pushing Republican leaders to take the battle over the Homeland Security Department to the brink, arguing the party would win the public relations war with Democrats if a standoff over immigration led to a shutdown of the agency.

The closed-door debate picked up new urgency in the Capitol on Wednesday, with House and Senate GOP leaders in an awkward public impasse over the issue — just a month after they assumed complete control of Congress and with two weeks before funding runs out for the department.


Conservative hard-liners are arguing they have a stronger political hand now than they did in 2013, when a fight over Obamacare led to a 16-day government shutdown and a backlash against Republicans. This time, conservatives say, Democrats are in a politically untenable position, given their refusal to begin Senate debate over the funding bill because it includes provisions aimed at gutting Barack Obama’s unilateral immigration actions. Democrats, they say, would ultimately capitulate after DHS shuts down.

The immigration matter was debated privately at a Republican lunch Wednesday in the Senate’s Mansfield Room, with leading conservatives, such as Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, asserting that Democrats would be the political losers if a DHS shutdown occurs, several senators said. Other immigration hard-liners, like Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Bill Flores (R-Texas), also argued Wednesday their party would be in a stronger political position if Congress fails to meet the Feb. 27 funding deadline.

And a prominent Republican and top Senate GOP political strategist — Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker — made a similar case. In an interview, Wicker said the latest battle over immigration is “far different” from the 2013 shutdown given that this fight is over a single agency — rather than the entire government — and that Democrats would incur a political backlash because of their refusal to even debate the matter.

“I have not been one to wave the bloody shirt very often in my 20-plus years in the Congress,” said Wicker, a former House member who now runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “But on this issue, Republicans are funding the government, and our Democratic colleagues are refusing to even get to the issue — even to show their voters back home where they stand.”

But other GOP leaders are skeptical, including Wicker’s House counterpart, Oregon’s Greg Walden, who runs the House GOP campaign committee.

“I don’t think we win that debate in the press; we don’t for a lot of reasons,” Walden said. “Some people think we can. I’m not one of them. Just because the American people expect us to come here and get our job done and get our work done, and work out our differences — and especially in the area of national security.”

The push by conservatives underscores the tricky political position of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who are trying to balance the demands of the GOP base to fight Obama’s immigration policies as well as their promises to run Washington without any more fiscal crises.

The House began the fight last month, amending the $39.7 billion must-pass DHS spending bill with provisions that would block Obama’s 2014 and 2012 decisions to defer deportations and provide work permits for up to 5 million undocumented immigrants. But last week, Senate Democrats filibustered three attempts to debate the House plan, demanding a “clean” bill free of immigration riders.

That has left McConnell and Boehner in a quandary, with each leader calling on the other to take the next step. Both men recognize the steep limits they face in their respective chambers: Boehner doesn’t believe he can secure the 218 votes to pass a clean funding bill. And McConnell can’t win Democratic support for anything other than a bill silent on immigration, leaving him at least six votes shy of breaking a filibuster.

“Both of us have our own math challenges,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) after his caucus’ lunch, which House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) attended.

Asked if Republicans could win the political battle if DHS shuts down, Cornyn said emphatically, “There will be no shutdown.”

With threats from abroad growing, many Republicans worry about any DHS shutdown, even if they disagree with Obama on immigration. Sen. Mark Kirk, a blue-state Republican facing a potentially tough reelection in Illinois next year, came out Wednesday for a clean funding bill, saying, “As the governing party, we should govern.”

At the lunch, which was led by the Senate’s conservative Steering Committee, which is chaired by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, senators discussed a range of options to disentangle them from the mess, but came to no resolution. McConnell, known to keep his cards close to his vest, signaled little about the party’s next steps.

Senators later said that some floated the idea of simply voting on a resolution of disapproval against Obama’s actions; others said the House should send over a bill that attacks only the president’s 2014 policies, not his 2012 move to defer deportations of young people brought to the country illegally; and some proposed a short-term continuing resolution if the parties are at an impasse by month’s end. Some even suggested scrapping next week’s Presidents Day recess.

If there’s no deal, Sessions argued, Republicans shouldn’t be afraid of the political consequences from a potential shutdown.

“The Democrats are refusing to pass the bill that fully funds Homeland Security,” Sessions said in an interview. “I don’t see how it’s possible they can blame the Republicans for not funding Homeland Security when they filibustered the bill that would fund it.”

Asked about the political ramifications for blowing past the deadline, Sessions said: “I’m not worried about that. We just need to be more coherent in our message. And a little more effective. … I think the Republicans are right on policy, right on the law, and they are right on congressional powers.”

Flores, the chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, said there would be “no” blowback for the GOP if the party fails to meet the Feb. 27 deadline.

“Because clearly, we did our job,” Flores said. “And the Senate Republicans are trying to do their job and you got a bunch of Democrats blocking it.”

Some conservatives argue that the DHS would still be able to operate given that a shutdown would prompt furloughs only of employees deemed “non-essential,” ensuring key security personnel would still be on the job.

“I think the president is going to have to compromise at some point,” said Michigan Rep. Justin Amash.

King, a leading foe of a comprehensive immigration overhaul, said Democrats would find it much harder to oppose the House plan on Feb. 28, a day after a shutdown would occur.

“This is an entirely different debate than funding the subsidy for somebody’s Obamacare,” King said Wednesday. “This is about whether Congress writes the laws, or whether the president writes the laws. There’s no precedent for the president to point to, even his own rhetoric, they are buried in this debate, and the more the public learns, the more they’re going to lose.”

Even with little time left, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brushed off the idea of a shutdown over the matter.

“There’s still plenty of time to solve this,” McCarthy said in an interview Wednesday. “We want to get it solved by the deadline — that’s why we went early. The Senate’s gotta be able to do something. They seem to act faster when the timeline gets shorter.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.