Thread: Today's DHS Funding Articles

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...wn-115266.html


DHS funding fight threatens Secret Service, FEMA
By David Nather and Seung Min Kim
2/18/15 5:41 AM EST

The way things are going in Congress, the Department of Homeland Security could be lucky if it gets just enough funding next week so it doesn’t have to shut its doors.

But in reality, a continuing resolution is just about the worst way that Congress could solve the funding problem, short of actually shutting the department down.

Customs and Border Protection wouldn’t be able to upgrade its mobile video systems to patrol the Rio Grande Valley. The Federal Emergency Management Agency wouldn’t be able to write the grants that pay the salaries of state and local emergency management officials. It might also have to cancel a series of training workshops next month for first responders.

And the 2016 presidential candidates have a stake in this, too: the Secret Service won’t be able to train the security details that are supposed to protect them on the campaign trail. It won’t be able to start training the agents who will be assigned to President Barack Obama when he leaves office, either.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has been warning Capitol Hill of the downsides of a continuing resolution, telling lawmakers that short-term funding won’t solve his problems. A continuing resolution wouldn’t include any of the money the department is supposed to get for new initiatives — it just keeps last year’s funding on autopilot. And it can’t issue the grants that help pay for emergency response and equipment upgrades, as well as the ones that fund surveillance cameras to look for terrorists in New York.
With the department’s funding scheduled to run out after Feb. 27, there is no constructive solution that is anywhere close to happening. The White House and Republican leaders aren’t talking to each other about a deal. And a “clean” funding bill isn’t in the cards either; even if House Speaker John Boehner wanted to bring one up, Republicans say there aren’t enough votes to pass it, even with Democrats’ help.

That leaves the non-solution — a short-term continuing resolution — as the only solution that stands a chance. It’s also the only one that Congress could pass quickly. Once lawmakers return next week, the House and the Senate will only have four legislative days to solve the problem, not nearly enough time to solve their bitter disagreements over the Republican efforts to block Obama’s immigration executive actions – a set of sweeping directives that have been temporarily halted by a federal judge in Texas.

If Congress can’t do any better than a series of continuing resolutions, the damage will mount quickly. The Secret Service won’t have the $21 million it needs to train the security agents for the 2016 campaign and purchase new vehicles and equipment, or the $4 million for the training of Obama’s post-White House security detail, according to spokesman Ed Donovan. And it won’t get the $25 million it has been promised to make the changes an advisory panel recommended after last year’s security breach at the White House, including 85 more agents to guard Obama and 200 new uniformed officers to protect other facilities.

There’s no way to know how many presidential candidates the Secret Service will have to protect, Donovan says — that’s a decision that will be made by Johnson in consultation with the top congressional leaders. But it has to be ready to guard as many as 10 candidates, he said, and “we can’t just throw them out there on the campaign trail.”

Customs and Border Patrol wouldn’t have the $90 million it needs for mobile video equipment in the Rio Grande Valley — a response to the influx of unaccompanied immigrant children last year — or $12 million to upgrade the X-ray equipment for screening cargo at the ports, according to CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske.

A short-term continuing resolution would also make it harder to deal with contractors, Kerlikowske said, because “they don’t know if you have funding for two or four months.”

And FEMA officials say they won’t be able to issue the grants to pay for more than 1,800 firefighter positions throughout the country, replace aging fire vehicles, or provide new breathing gear for fire departments. They’re also warning that state and local emergency departments are under strain — and might have to start furloughing their own people — because FEMA hasn’t been able to fund the Emergency Management Performance Grant, which pays for many of the local officials’ salaries.

There’s no guarantee that Congress will even get its act together long enough to pass a continuing resolution, now that some Republicans — including Boehner — are talking openly about letting the department shut down and blaming it on Senate Democrats. And publicly, at least, GOP leaders are happy to keep the staredown going. “The pressure mounts on the Democrats too,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told POLITICO. “I think everyone in leadership has made it clear that we’ve done our jobs.”

If it is a continuing resolution, though, Johnson will have a whole new series of headaches to deal with.
In meetings with the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees, and at a luncheon with Senate Democrats two weeks ago, Johnson said a continuing resolution would be disruptive, make day-to-day operations difficult, and make it harder to hire people to fill vacancies, according to lawmakers and sources familiar with the conversations.

“This agency was created after 9/11. We have a lot of challenges in front of us – cybersecurity, the threats of people who want to do us harm. And that requires planning, that requires resource investment and it doesn’t require members of Congress playing hopscotch with the funding, you know?” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, one of the lawmakers who has met with Johnson in recent weeks.

Johnson is also telling lawmakers that the Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t be able to pay for new detention beds for immigrants who crossed the border illegally, and it would lose critical funding that has already been negotiated in the appropriations bills, including $25 million to upgrade scanners at the border and ports and $49 million for new radiation detection systems.

Plus, any short-term funding bill only buys the department a short amount of time before it has to start preparing for a shutdown again, DHS officials say. That’s because it takes at least two weeks to get ready. The department is already updating the 43-page contingency plan it developed in September 2013 — the one it used for the last government shutdown — and is warning contractors that a funding lapse next week is a real possibility.

“It gives you a couple of weeks, but after that, guess what? You’re back to planning for a shutdown,” said DHS spokeswoman Tanya Bradsher.

All of these warnings are mixed in with Johnson’s message about the big impact of the funding fight: morale at his department is already low, and the constant threat of a shutdown is only making it worse.

“You want to say, ‘what you do is really important,’ but what everyone says is, ‘well, if it’s that important, why wasn’t I recognized for it by Congress?’ ” Kerlikowske said.

“It’s a terrible, demoralizing way to run government,” said Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “The morale at this department is among the lowest in government, and this kind of stop-and-go, stop-and-go funding is going to make it worse. And these are the folks who are protecting us from all kinds of things.”

Johnson has been especially adamant that his department shouldn’t be singled out — and he shouldn’t be the only Cabinet secretary who can’t get reliable funding. “He’s basically saying, I really would like to be treated like everybody else … I can’t plan my programs without money. And so here I am, planning for a possible furlough of employees when I ought to be ramping up bringing new employees in based on a fully-funded budget,” said Thompson.

Republicans have had one consistent response: Yes, it’s terrible. Go tell the Democrats.

That’s the message Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee, gave Johnson after the two met last week. “We’re trying to get on a bill, so yeah, anything he can do to help us get on the bill so we can debate it, offer amendments,” Hoeven told reporters after the meeting. “We cannot finish a bill unless the Democrats let us get on a bill.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...#ixzz3S9qgYj8P

Someone needs to tell Jeb Johnson to stop crying like a baby and tell Obama to drop is quest to amnesty 5 million illegal aliens!

Originally Posted by MW

Someone needs to tell Jeb Johnson to stop crying like a baby and tell Obama to drop is quest to amnesty 5 million illegal aliens!

Exactly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6708720.html

Marco Rubio Cries Uncle, Urges Congress To Fund DHS

By Elise Foley
Posted: 02/18/2015 5:16 pm EST Updated: 2 hours ago

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joined a small but growing group of Republicans who say it's time for Congress to vote on Department of Homeland Security funding without including controversial immigration measures that could risk a shutdown.

“We have to fund Homeland Security," he told reporters Wednesday in Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "We can't let Homeland Security shut down."

DHS is set to run out of funding on Feb. 27 if Congress doesn't act, but the two parties are at a standstill. The House passed a bill last month to fund the department, but with dead-on-arrival amendments that would gut the president's key immigration policies, including recent executive actions they say are unconstitutional. President Barack Obama has said he would veto that bill if it got to his desk, and Senate Democrats repeatedly blocked attempts in the upper chamber to move forward with the legislation.

Some Republicans have said it's time to fund DHS and then deal with Obama's executive actions separately to avoid a shutdown of the department, and it appears Rubio has joined that camp. According to the Review-Journal, Rubio noted to reporters that the Senate doesn't have the votes to pass the House's DHS funding bill and that Obama had promised to veto it. Rubio's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) voted with Democrats multiple times against moving forward with the House's bill, and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said last week it was a bad strategy "to attempt to use a spending bill in order to try to poke a finger in the president's eye."

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) told reporters last week that he thinks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should allow a vote on a DHS bill without immigration measures.

"I generally agree with the Democratic position here," Kirk said. “I think we should have never fought this battle on DHS funding."

McConnell acknowledged last week that the House-passed DHS funding bill is "stuck" in the Senate, and said "the next move obviously is up to the House."

House Republicans, though, have indicated no interest in offering up a DHS funding bill that doesn't block Obama's executive actions on immigration.

"The House has acted. We've done our job," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on "Fox News Sunday" last weekend. "Senate Democrats are the ones putting us in this precarious position. It's up to Senate Democrats to get their act together."

Obama's November executive actions on immigration were put on hold this week after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction while he considers a case over their constitutionality.

UPDATE: Alex Conant, an adviser to the Senator, emailed in a statement to push back on the idea that Rubio is urging Republicans to acquiesce in the DHS funding fight:

Senator Rubio does not support shutting down DHS. But he does support stopping the new executive order on immigration and is willing to support any approach we could get passed to stop it. But the President had made clear he will veto any effort to stop his unconstitutional order. And Senate Democrats have made clear they will not even end there filibuster on the DHS funding bill. The result will be a DHS shutdown which would be harmful to our national security. The answer is not for Republicans to surrender and pass a clean funding bill. The answer is for the President and Senate Democrats to abandon the executive orderand cooperate in passing a series of immigration bills beginning with real border security.

It didn't take long for Rubio's comments to generate criticism amongst conservatives. So take this statement for what it is: clarification but also clean up. The Senator's position appears to be that Republicans must recognize that Obama won't budge on DHS funding but find a way to work around it with just days to spare.

"The goal here isn't to force a veto," said Conant in a follow up email. "It's to pass a bill that funds DHS without implementing executive amnesty. He wants to get on the bill; add additional funding for enforcement and other measures; and a repeal of the executive order."

LOL - I couldn't pass this one up ... from mole/maggot/ ..... John Freehery


DHS funding: GOP doesn’t deserve the blame (but will probably get it)

Democrats aren't allowing a Senate debate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, but it's the Republicans who are likely to get blamed, if the result is a shutdown.


By John Feehery, Decoder contributor

February 18, 2015

Republicans in Congress remind me of the kid who constantly gets in trouble at school. Even when it’s not his fault, he gets blamed.House Speaker John Boehner said over the weekend that the House has done its job when it comes to funding the Department of Homeland Security. The funding for the cumbersome agency turns off in 10 days, and it doesn’t look like the Senate will act on the House bill anytime soon.
DHS has a couple hundred thousand workers, including the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, the Secret Service, FEMA and INS. Should this sliver of the government close down, most of those employees would be deemed essential, meaning they would have to go to work without getting paid.

About 30,000 employees in DHS are deemed nonessential, which makes me wonder why they are employed there in the first place. I guess the first goal of government reform should be that all employees paid for by the taxpayers are essential to the mission of governing.

It’s going to be awkward for members of Congress to get paid while the Border Patrol is not getting paid. I would hope that every press secretary of every Republican member of the House and Senate prepare themselves for that question: Are you going to continue to accept your paycheck while those poor suckers defending the country against migrant workers are not getting paid?

The House probably overreached when it came to passing their bill over to the Senate. When I was working for the GOP leadership, our philosophy was to pass the most conservative bill out of the House and prepare ourselves for the inevitable watering down by the Senate.

The problem for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is the House bill was so toxic (and contained so many politically explosive provisions) that Senate Democrats are afraid to even take the bill up on the Senate floor.

They have successfully (so far) refused to even allow the House bill to even be considered on the Senate floor, which is pretty gutsy if you think about it.

This is a challenge to McConnell’s promise to allow free-flowing debate, to get the Senate working again, but it is completely consistent with Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid’s philosophy of refusing to allow the upper body to debate anything controversial.

Republicans have the upper hand logically, but not so rhetorically, mostly because of what happened with the government shutdown over Obamacare.

All Senate Republicans are asking for is a chance to debate the House bill, to allow the process to move forward, to have real votes on real amendments. Senate Democrats shouldn’t get away with their obstruction, but they probably will.

It’s not fair, but if the Department of Homeland Security does shut down, in all likelihood, it will be the Republicans that get the blame. The question is, will anybody – outside of the 200,000 DHS employees – really care that much? After all, most of the essential work will continue to get done and most of those employees will get their back pay, eventually.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Deco...robably-get-it

It’s not fair, but if the Department of Homeland Security does shut down, in all likelihood, it will be the Republicans that get the blame. The question is, will anybody – outside of the 200,000 DHS employees – really care that much? After all, most of the essential work will continue to get done and most of those employees will get their back pay, eventually.

Blamed by whom? Democrats?

No, we don't care that much, in fact, ..... we don't care at all.

As to "fair", no it's not fair, but most things aren't fair. Is it "fair" for Obama to be handing out legal work authorizations to 6 million illegal workers when over 20 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or just gave up due to lack of jobs in the United States? Is it "fair" that every new job created in the past 8 years went to illegal aliens and immigrants instead of US citizens? Is it "fair" that 57% of all immigrants, legal and illegal, and 71% of illegal aliens are on some form of welfare? Is it "fair" for the IRS to hand out tax credit welfare based on illegal work to illegal aliens? Is it "fair" for Democrat to block a DHS funding bill because Republicans attached amendments that would stop handing our work permits, jobs, welfare and tax refunds to illegal aliens?

Unfairness abounds which is why Republicans are correctly and appropriately using the DHS funding bill to stop some of it, after all, DHS is the Department that carries out these unlawful acts that benefit illegal aliens and harm citizens.

According to polling, it was Republicans who took it on the chin when the entire government endured a partial shutdown for 16 days in October 2013. But it was also Republicans who picked up seats in the House and regained the majority in the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections.


This time, the nature of the backlash could depend on how much the American public is willing to take, and how long they are willing to take it. The impact of a partial DHS shutdown would not be as severe as what happened in October 2013 – in effect, putting less pressure on lawmakers to work out a deal.

Americans will always support doing the right thing, when it's really, really the right thing, and there is no question at all that defunding DHS to stop amnesty is absolutely, 100% worth any temporary grumbling, naysaying or whining that may follow.

Not a dime, Republicans, not a dime. Hold the line. Stand your ground.