Transportation Security Administration agents have been working without pay since the Department of Homeland Security entered a partial shutdown on Feb. 14.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a stopgap plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for 60 days on March 27.
It passed on a 213–203 vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) proposed the short-term bill to fund the entire DHS after he rejected a Senate-passed measure that would have funded most of the department, aside from its immigration enforcement operations.
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Johnson told reporters on Friday. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”
Johnson denied that House and Senate Republicans were at odds over the bill and blamed Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for the partial shutdown of DHS, which entered day 42 on Friday.
Schumer pushed back against Johnson’s alternative proposal and said if it passed the House, it would be dead on arrival in the Senate.
“We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical Homeland Security functions—but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms,” Schumer wrote in an X post.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.) criticized Johnson for “refusing to let us vote on it and offering a doomed, partisan bill instead.”
“House Republicans need to stop playing games with air safety and TSA workers’ paychecks,” Houlahan wrote in an X post on Friday night.
The weekslong shutdown has greatly impacted Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, who have not received a check since DHS entered a partial shutdown in mid-February.
Nearly 500 TSA agents have quit since the partial shutdown started, and thousands of others have called out sick because they didn’t have money for gas, food on the table, or to pay their mortgages, the DHS said.
The staffing shortages have caused hourslong lines at airports.
President Donald Trump attempted to help TSA agents after he ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to start helping out at 14 airports with long lines on March 23.
On March 27, he signed an executive order that would pay the TSA agents as early as March 30, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill continued debating how DHS would be funded.
“If Democrats in the Congress will not act to honor the service of our TSA officers, who are now performing their critical public safety responsibilities without knowing whether they will be able to buy food for their families or pay their rent, then my Administration will take action,” the memorandum stated.
By Jacki Thrapp
