Lawmakers are jetting from Washington, D.C., without a deal to prevent a partial government shutdown.
Their departure comes after the Senate was unable to send a full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Senate Democrats doubled down on their demands for stringent reforms to immigration enforcement and bucked multiple attempts Thursday to keep the agency open.
With both chambers now on their way to a weeklong recess, the agency is expected to shutter at midnight Friday. Unless a deal is struck before lawmakers return, DHS will be shut down for at least that period of time.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., made the call to send lawmakers home and noted that if negotiations made a breakthrough, they would be on 24-hour notice to return. But talks, for now, are somewhere between baby steps and stuck.
‘What it appears to me, at least at this point, is happening is the Democrats, like they did last fall, they really don’t want the solution,’ Thune said. ‘They don’t want the answer. They want the political issue.’
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus blocked an attempt to pass the original DHS funding bill and a subsequent two-week funding extension.
Their resistance comes after the White House unveiled the legislative text of the administration’s counteroffer, which several Senate Democrats balked at Thursday morning.
‘The administration doesn’t actually want to reform ICE,’ Schumer said. ‘They never do it on their own. That is why we need — we are fighting for — legislation to rein in ICE and stop the violence.’
Senate Democrats have demanded a stringent list of reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They weren’t persuaded by border czar Tom Homan that operations in Minneapolis would be drawn down as negotiations continue.
It was a déjà vu moment from months earlier, when Thune repeatedly tried to peel Democrats away from Schumer during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history but failed to break their blockade.
While there was optimism that negotiations were moving in a positive direction earlier this week, those hopes appeared to have shattered.
‘At this point, it seems clear that the Democrats are going to walk away from that bipartisan conversation,’ a senior White House official said. ‘They’re going to shut the department down. They’re going to deprive Americans of critical services such as FEMA, such as TSA and what will be the third partial government shutdown of this Congress.’
Senate Democrats received the legislative version of Republicans and the White House’s counteroffer Wednesday night, but many said it was ‘not sufficient,’ and several Democrats leaving a closed-door meeting Thursday morning said a deal remained out of reach.
Given the stagnation in talks, Thune opted to go ahead with the scheduled recess, but made clear to lawmakers that if there was a breakthrough they would need to return.
‘Obviously, we’ve made it clear to people that they have to be available to come back and vote,’ Thune said.
Talks of another counteroffer to the White House are in the works. Some Senate Democrats hope that the upcoming recess and likely closure of DHS will serve as a wake-up call to Republicans.
Complicating matters is that several members of the House and Senate are expected to travel to Germany for the annual Munich Security Conference.
‘I still think the Republicans are in a bubble and do not understand the depth of the anger out there in the world,’ Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Fox News Digital.
‘And maybe this break will allow them to go home and get yelled at, not just by people who are progressive, but everybody who thinks that this agency is out of control and needs to be reined in.’