The House voted down a three-week, short term Department of Homeland Security funding bill Friday afternoon. The measure failed on a vote of 203-224 with 52 Republicans voting against the measure.
The three-week measure was intended as a stop-gap to allow the House and Senate time to reconcile their divergent DHS appropriations bills without a DHS shutdown.
Funding for DHS expires at midnight.
Last month the House passed a DHS funding bill with provisions to block President Obama’s executive amnesty.
When the bill reached the Senate, Democrats spent much of the month of February refusing to allow debate on it because they opposed the immigration provisions.
After nearly a month of Democrats blocking consideration of the bill, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acquiesced to Democrat demands this week and moved a so- called “clean” DHS bill, free of the controversial riders.
The Senate passed that clean bill Friday morning.
Following the Senate’s passage of the bill, House Republicans passed a motion to go to conference with the Senate to reconcile the chambers’ divergent Department of Homeland Security funding bills Friday on a vote of 228-191.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has already said, however, that Senate Democrats will not entertain a conference committee to blend the bills.
“We will not allow a conference to take place. It won’t happen,” Reid told reporters this week.
With the clock ticking on the expiration of DHS funding House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced after the three-week funding bill failed that votes later Friday night and into the weekend are possible.
As it became apparent that the three-week measure would fail, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) exited the House chamber in silence. He did not respond to questions.
