Congress in Race Against Clock to Stop Department of Homeland Security Shut Down

The House of Representatives failed to pass a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security, setting off a race against time to try and fund the agency before it must shut down at midnight.

The New York Times reports that the vote to fund DHS failed by 21 votes, with 224 against, and 203 for.

The fight over a DHS shut down has its origins in an executive order issued by President Barack Obama that provided immigrants who meet certain criteria with a reprieve from the threat of deportation. Congressional Republicans sought to reverse the order by attaching restrictions to it via a bill that also provided funding for DHS.

The Associated Press reports that many Republicans feel as though the country would not be in danger if DHS was shut down, and they also believe that they will face little political fallout. This seems to be true, as the GOP shut down the entirety of the government in 2013, but was still able to secure control of both houses of Congress in 2014's elections.

The Republicans believe that a DHS shutdown will not have any detrimental effects on US national security because most people at DHS still ended up working during the last shutdown. However, some DHS employees would end up not getting paid, meaning they may not work as hard as they ought to.

The AP notes that the operations of the Coast Guard, Travel Security Agency, Customs and Border Protection, the secret service, and air marshals, would be largely unaffected. That means that of the agency's 230,000 employees, only around 30,000 would be told not to go to work.  

Democrats are already seizing on the opportunity to present the GOP as weak on national security.