WASHINGTON – Despite recent momentum in Congress to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, political infighting among Republicans means the funding gap is far from over despite intensifying pressure on lawmakers to act – and could even drag into mid-April.
The House of Representatives on March 27 passed a stopgap funding bill for the agency largely along party lines, 213-203. But without support from Democrats, the legislation is already "dead on arrival," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, declared earlier in the day. That means it has virtually no chance of becoming law because it does not have enough votes to pass the Senate.
The doomed measure's passage after a House GOP revolt quashed the short-lived optimism on Capitol Hill that a bipartisan Senate deal reached over the previous night would finally end a shutdown that has led to long airport security lines over the past six weeks.
Neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate abandoned a scheduled two-week spring congressional recess for Easter and Passover, meaning it's not clear when the shutdown could end. Senators were already gone when the House voted.
The effects of the impasse on airport lines may be softened, though, after President Donald Trump signed an order without the help of Congress to reroute money to compensate Transportation Security Administration workers amid the crisis. Those employees could start receiving paychecks as early as March 30, DHS said in a statement to USA TODAY.
The Senate's solution, which was agreed to by both Republicans and Democrats in the early morning hours of March 27, would have fully funded all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Both divisions already have been operating with massive cash reserves provided to them under Trump's megabill that Republicans in Congress approved in 2025.
The Senate bill showed Democrats' willingness to drop some demands they had called nonnegotiable. Yet House Republicans denounced their Senate counterparts' shutdown exit strategy, saying they couldn't be seen as defunding immigration enforcement in any way.
Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-Minnesota, said the Senate's off-ramp was "not a solution."
"It's a Swiss-cheese funding bill defined by its holes and deficiencies," she said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune didn't publicly address the barrage of criticisms from House Speaker Mike Johnson's membership on March 27.
House and Senate Democrats, meanwhile, argued that the easiest and quickest way to end the shutdown would be for the House to pass the Senate compromise.
"We all know that the Senate bill is the exit ramp," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts. "So take it."
