Lawmakers sought Friday night to prevent a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security before midnight, when funding for the agency is slated to run out.
Hours before the deadline, the Senate approved a one-week stopgap bill by voice vote that punts the deadline to next Friday. That move gave the House about three and a half hours to pass the short-term extension before the midnight deadline.
In a breakthrough, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who had urged Democrats to vote against a previous short-term measure, asked fellow Democrats to support the one-week patch, saying that it would tee up a vote on a long-term funding bill next week.
With Democratic support, the one-week patch should have sufficient votes to pass.
Those developments came after a stunning rebuke to GOP leaders, when the House failed to pass a three-week measure.
The vote was 203-224.
The lost vote was an embarrassment for House leaders, who had appeared confident earlier Friday that the measure would easily pass.
Fifty-two Republicans broke with their leadership to oppose the temporary funding measure. Conservatives said the stopgap bill represented a cave to the White House by failing to curtail the president's executive orders regarding immigration.
And only a dozen Democrats backed the bill after party leaders discouraged them from supporting a measure that would simply rehash the current fight again in mid-March. House Democrats still say they want a bill, passed earlier Friday by the Senate, to fund the department for one year without any immigration-related add-ons.
Earlier Friday, President Barack Obama convened a meeting with key staff, including DHS head Jeh Johnson, late Friday to discuss the impending deadline, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. The president also called the House and Senate Democratic leaders "to get an update on efforts to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security does not shut down."
House leaders had argued that the weeks-long extension would give them time to hash out differences with the Senate to come up with a long-term solution that also addressed immigration. But Boehner was unable to woo enough conservatives with that argument, forcing another scramble as the clock ticks towards midnight.
Late on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a 46-page document outlining procedures for a possible funding lapse, including an outline of which employees would be exempt from the shutdown.
In the event of a shutdown, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said that about 80 percent of DHS employees would still be required to come to work but would not be paid until Congress acts.
Some moderate Republicans were incensed at the failure of the earlier three-week vote.
Asked if the one-week patch would pass, Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent told reporters: "It better. It sure as hell better have the votes."
First published February 27 2015, 4:34 AM
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