Lawmakers had one job to do during the first two months of the year. And they might just blow it.

The Republican-led House and Senate skipped town on Friday for a weeklong recess, short on options and just five legislative days from letting the Department of Homeland Security’s funding expire — Congress’ first major deadline of 2015. But despite a lack of obvious solutions to their standoff on the spending bill and President Barack Obama’s immigration policies, GOP leaders are sticking to their story: There will be no shutdown.


“We’ve got 15 whole days!” an exasperated Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Thursday after facing daily media barrages all week about his party’s legislative strategy. “We tend to operate by deadlines around here, and I think that has a way of focusing everybody’s attention. I have every confidence we’ll meet the deadline one way or the other.”

After weeks of wrangling, the impasse remains unchanged: The GOP base and many Republicans in Congress insist that any DHS bill must target Obama’s unilateral actions on immigration. But Senate Democrats have repeatedly filibustered that proposal three times, demanding a bill free of immigration riders.

The GOP is praying that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have a solution, but meanwhile Republicans are spending much of their energy trying to blame the Democrats for any shutdown. A diverse group of Republicans — representing conservatives and leadership — sounded that theme during 35 minutes of zingers at a Thursday news conference.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a conservative immigration hardliner, insisted that Democrats will abandon their filibuster as the funding deadline draws near — even though Democratic sources say that will not happen.

“Feb. 27 midnight, that’s the witching hour,” King said in an interview. “That will be down at the end of what we could accurately characterize as ‘hell week.’ After this [recess], it’s an entirely different vote for those six or so Senate Democrats. The closer it gets, the clearer they will think.”

But as the party that controls both chambers of Congress, Republicans appear likely to take the lion’s share of the blame if the funding spigot shuts off for an agency so crucial to national security. A shutdown would force furloughs for about 30,000 DHS workers, Secretary Jeh Johnson warned this week. The department’s approximately 200,000 other employees would continue to work, though most without pay.

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) said it’s “irresponsible” for some Republicans to advocate a funding lapse and then blame the Democrats if the department shuts down. He had said in January, during the House and Senate joint Republican retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that he would vote for a clean DHS bill with no immigration language.

“Republicans and Democrats have to work together and especially never take a chance on having our national security at risk,” Denham said this week.

A small minority of congressional Republicans have called for their party to take the political heat from their own base and vote for a clean funding bill — a GOP cave on immigration. Such a measure would fund the department through September and would avoid the trap of a short-term extension that just prolongs the fight.

“Can you take a straight answer?” asked Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). “I think we should just pass a clean DHS bill and fund the department.”

But this suggestion is not yet popular among Republicans, some of whom are seeking their own way out of the jam. Some Republicans have proposed narrowing the GOP’s response — for instance, by focusing their attack just on the most recent immigration actions that Obama announced in November. That would leave intact a narrower directive Obama issued in 2012 to protect young undocumented immigrants.

But that idea instantly fell flat among Democrats.

Another option offered by moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is for the House to separate the immigration provisions and the underlying funding bill and send them in tandem to the Senate, which would reject the riders and probably approve the funding portion. But that might not placate conservatives.

Some Republicans also hope that a ruling in a lawsuit, led by Texas, against the executive actions could give the GOP a way out. If the courts find that Obama’s actions are unconstitutional, that may take the legislative fight off the table, Collins said.

While Collins and many of her colleagues have pursued bipartisan deal-making on domestic policy, simply bowing to Democrats is not on the docket this time around. They say the president has gone too far.

“We need to resolve it,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said. “We need to fund DHS and also find a legislative mechanism to express our disapproval with the president’s executive order.”

The problem for Republicans is that Senate Democrats will block the DHS bill as long as it contains any immigration provisions. Democrats also reject the notion that they would share the blame for a funding lapse.

“They’re in charge,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) of the Republicans. “They’re responsible.”

With no room between the two parties for compromise, the upshot is that Homeland Security really could fall off the cliff. Even if the House passes a short-term funding bill immediately before the Feb. 27 deadline, any Republican senator who thinks the GOP is capitulating could throw sand in the gears and delay it past the zero hour.

“As much as both sides don’t want [a funding lapse] to happen, I think that it is always a possibility,” said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), a conservative member who has agitated for this confrontation.

But most Republicans don’t want to entertain that possibility. Surely, they say, someone must have a plan locked in a box somewhere.

“The leadership will be responsible and find a solution so we don’t have a shutdown,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.).

But he didn’t know what that solution would entail — and at this point nobody else seems to, either.

“At this stage,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), “the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is at best a foggy haze.”

David Nather contributed to this report.