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Congress took a major step toward ending the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Thursday as the White House warned hundreds of thousands of federal employees were on the verge of missing paychecks amid the 75-day funding lapse.
The House of Representatives unanimously approved a Senate-passed spending measure covering most of the department’s appropriations through September.
The vote came after the DHS funding measure had stalled in the lower chamber for more than a month as House Speaker Mike Johnson declined to put the bill on the floor over objections to language he said defunded law enforcement. The speaker's opposition reflected the views of many in his conference, who viewed the bill as a dead letter when the Senate passed it unanimously in March.
Johnson changed course this week after the White House appeared to side with the Senate and urged swift passage of the upper chamber’s bill.
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"We’re not defying the White House," Johnson told reporters Wednesday. "Everybody understands what we're doing. We're all one team."
In an internal memo sent to Hill offices and obtained by Fox News Digital, the White House warned it would not be able to pay employees starting in May if the House did not pass the Senate’s partial DHS bill. The administration since early April had been using existing funds to cover six weeks of back pay and a new pay period for DHS employees — but warned that money was quickly depleting.
"If this funding is exhausted, the Administration will be unable to pay DHS personnel beginning in May, which will once again unleash havoc on air travel, leave critical law enforcement officers—including our brave Secret Service agents—and the Coast Guard without paychecks, and jeopardize national security," the memo states.
Some Republicans argued that failure to move the Senate’s DHS bill prior to leaving Washington for a planned recess was untenable.
"We have got to fund DHS, even if it's 80% of DHS," Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital in an interview. "We're in a dangerous position with funding levels right now. We have to get this done before we even think of leaving on a recess."
Langworthy sent a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, to Johnson earlier in the week imploring the speaker to put the Senate’s DHS bill up for a vote.
"What other avenue of approach are you going to have? Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital when asked about whether the House would take up the Senate’s languishing DHS bill. "This is hurting families of individuals willing to serve their communities, their nation, their state. Why wouldn't we?"
Democrats, who initially sparked the shutdown over objections to funding immigration enforcement, supported the Senate measure because it did not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
"Bring the bipartisan Senate-passed bill to the House Floor today and it would fund the Department of Homeland Security in its entirety with the exception of ICE and the violent Republican mass deportation machine," Jeffries said at a news conference on Monday.
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