READ: Republicans struggle to avoid Homeland Security shutdown
House Republicans have already passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but that bill is dead on arrival in both the Senate and on President Barack Obama’s desk because it would also reverse his executive actions on immigration aimed at shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said “it would be terrible” for funding for the agency to wither because of a political fight over Obama’s executive action.
–
Indeed, even fellow Republican, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that allowing the agency shut down was not an option.
“I’ll be the first to say when we have a department whose mission is to protect the homeland especially in these times, we need to fund it,” Corker said. “It needs to be funded, we do not need to leave our nation in a situation with the type of threats that we have with an agency that’s not working at full steam. It needs to be resolved and I think it will be.”
