In a social media post Thursday evening, Donald Trump said he would sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as Congress struggled to reach a deal to end the budget impasse that has jammed airports and left workers without paychecks.
Trump said he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.”
“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!” he posted.
With pressure mounting, the White House had floated the extraordinary move of invoking a national emergency to pay TSA workers while senators reviewed a “last and final” offer from Republicans to Democrats to end the funding impasse. Details of the Trump plan were not immediately available, but a national emergency declaration would be politically fraught and almost certain to face legal challenges. Instead, Trump may simply be shifting money from other sources.
Democrats have been refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security as they demand changes to rein in Trump’s immigration enforcement operations. The Senate came to a standstill and senators, ready to leave town for their own spring break, had prepared to stay all night to reach a deal.
For the third time in two months, the U.S. House had passed legislation Thursday to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown — almost six weeks after funding lapsed. However, that would not have end the impasse without a bipartisan breakthrough in the Senate, where negotiators scrambled to reach a deal to reopen DHS before lawmakers are scheduled to leave town Friday for a two-week recess.
Republicans used the 218-206 vote to force Democrats to go on the record against funding the agency and adopted a nonbinding resolution that expressed support for fully funding DHS, while rejecting Democratic attempts to fund non-immigration agencies, including TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard.
Funding only some DHS agencies would “degrade” coordination, the measure states, and “create uncertainty in an increasingly heightened threat environment.”
Meanwhile, airport screening lines grew at hubs throughout the country as 50,000 TSA officers have worked without pay since mid-February, and TSA screeners continue to stop showing up to work causing
major strains at U.S. airports and the longest lines in the agency’s history.
Earlier this week, Trump tried to tie DHS funding legislation to getting his generally unpopular Save America Act to vote passed.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump for trying to “sabotage negotiations.”
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