House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he is confident that the partial shutdown will end with a scheduled Tuesday vote.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday will begin work to pass a Senate bill to fund the government as multiple agencies remain in a partial shutdown.
Several sectors of the government entered a partial shutdown just after midnight on Saturday despite the Senate’s passage of legislation hours earlier to prevent it. The shutdown is affecting the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Homeland Security.
On Monday, the House will begin work to send the Senate-passed legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk as employees in the affected agencies begin shutdown procedures. Non-essential employees in the affected agencies will be furloughed until funding is restored.
The House Rules Committee will take up the measure—which would extend Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding for two weeks, while providing full-year authorizations for the other five departments affected—around 4 p.m. local time, with a vote of the full House to follow on Tuesday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he is “confident” that the partial shutdown will end with the Tuesday vote, despite indicating that House Democrats haven’t giving their support to pass the Senate-passed measure.
“We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own,” Johnson told NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
House Democratic leadership has not indicated support for the measure publicly, despite it having been backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Senate Democrats.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told ABC’s “This Week” it’s clear that the “Department of Homeland Security needs to be dramatically reformed.”
“Masks should come off,” he said. “Judicial warrants should absolutely be required consistent with the Constitution, in our view, before DHS agents or ICE agents are breaking into the homes of the American people or ripping people out of their cars.”
Under the Senate plan, reforms like this would be considered later as part of a full-year funding package for DHS.
If Democrats don’t back the compromise measure, Johnson will need to rely on the narrow House Republican majority to push the measure over the finish line. Currently, he can spare only a single defection.
However, that could face challenges as some members have expressed skepticism toward the Senate proposal.
By Joseph Lord
