Grants for state and local law-enforcement agencies and fire departments would be suspended because there would be no money for the grants or no one to process the paperwork, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said during a briefing with reporters from regional newspapers, including the News Sentinel.
About 30,000 employees would be furloughed, while the other 80 percent of the department’s 230,000 personnel would have to work without pay because they are deemed essential to public safety. Those workers include border security agents, airport-checkpoint agents and immigration officials.
“A shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has real consequences,” Johnson said.
Homeland Security will run out of money at midnight Friday unless Congress approves a budget to keep it operating.
The U.S. House approved a budget last month that would provide funds for the department through Sept. 30, but would also roll back President Barack Obama’s executive actions granting working permits to millions of immigrants in the country illegally. Senate Democrats have blocked the bill and say they won’t let it advance until the provisions regarding Obama’s executive actions are removed.
Senate Republicans scrambled Tuesday to find a way to keep the department from shuttering. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he would strip the immigration provisions from the bill and include them in a separate piece of legislation. That would allow conservatives to vote to stop Obama’s executive actions and still fund Homeland Security through Sept. 30.
But before Senate Democrats will go along with such a plan, they want some assurance that House Speaker John Boehner would allow a budget bill without the immigration provisions to be put to a vote in the House.
In his briefing with reporters, Johnson said many local law-enforcement agencies rely on grants from the department to help pay for equipment for surveillance and first responders. But those grants would be suspended if the department shuts down, he said.
Shutting down Homeland Security would disrupt the department’s ability to protect the nation and have other serious repercussions, such as an impact on employee morale, he said.
“If people are not getting paid, it raises the possibility they will call in sick,” Johnson said. “If Congress wants to have a debate about immigration, it should have a debate about immigration.”
But, “it’s just bad governing, bad policy, bad politics to leverage the immigration debate to budget for the homeland security of this nation,” he said.
©2015 the Knoxville News-Sentinel (Knoxville, Tenn.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
