By Richard Cowan and Nolan D. McCaskill
WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) – Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday said they will take a two-pronged approach to ending the legislative deadlock over Department of Homeland Security funding by passing a bill soon to end the partial agency shutdown and attempting to follow up with another bill providing money for the remainder of the Trump administration.
Congress “will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said in a joint statement.
Congress is in the midst of a two-week recess.
But the next legislative action is expected to come early on Thursday, when the Senate is scheduled to hold a “pro forma” session that usually operates for a very short period of time and with few senators in the chamber.
The goal, according to a source with knowledge of the plan, is to again approve a DHS funding bill that the Senate unanimously passed last week, but the House rejected. That bill would fund DHS to September 30, the end of this fiscal year.
The longer-term funding will take longer to compose and could be through a process that excludes Democrats.
President Donald Trump said he was working with Johnson and Thune to fund immigration agents through a process that bypasses the Senate filibuster.
“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“I am asking that the Bill be on my desk NO LATER than June 1st,” he said.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Nolan D. McCaskill in Washington and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto; Editing by Daphne Psaledakis and Rosalba O’Brien)
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