NEW: Dems Throw In Towel on Schumer Shutdown II: TSA Boogaloo

Allow me to paraphrase T.S. Eliot from that poem every high-school English teacher assigned back in the day. This is the way Schumer Shutdowns end – not with a bang, but a whimper. And even the media knows who’s whimpering.

Senate Democrats left the Department of Homeland Security without funding in a time of war. They insisted that this would save America from the real threat to their security … ICE agents and the Border Patrol. Chuck Schumer refused to fund anything without imposing a set of radical reforms that would all but derail immigration enforcement, especially the requirement for judicial warrants to detain illegal aliens, which have never been required in the past.

In the end, though, Democrats threw in the towel and got nothing at all for wasting weeks of their effort. Again:

After 41 days, the Senate voted early Friday morning to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, excluding ICE and CBP, ending a bitter impasse that laid bare the inability of both parties to close out an agreement.

In a near-empty chamber, senators approved the funding by voice vote at 3 a.m. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso and other senior Republicans spent hours late Thursday night into Friday morning calling and cajoling their colleagues to support the measure — or at least not to object.

The fight over ICE and CBP will be pushed to reconciliation, where Republican leaders can funnel the two agencies even more money. This will likely be coupled with Iran war funding and possibly the SAVE America Act, the GOP’s photo ID and proof-of-citizenship bill that senators have been debating for weeks. It will be a party-line vote that will put Republicans under further pressure.

Punchbowl tries hard to spin this as a no-winners outcome. It did leave ICE and the Border Patrol without an annual appropriation, which will get addressed in reconciliation shortly. However, Republicans passed a $75 billion operating fund for ICE and CBP last year, with the intent to fund some capital projects for new detention facilities as well as expansions of operations. The fund has enough money already to cover more than two years of ICE budgets, and the new funding in a reconciliation bill will likely extend that independence even further. 

The Associated Press cuts to the heart of the surrender more cleanly, emphases mine:

With pressure mounting to resolve the 42-day stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the endgame emerged in the final hours before TSA workers miss another paycheck Friday. President Donald Trump said he would sign an order to immediately pay the TSA agents, saying he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.” The deal did not include any of the restraints Democrats have demanded as they sought to rein in Trump’s mass deportation agenda. …

Senators worked through the night on the deal that would fund much of the rest of the department, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and TSA, but without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Customs was funded, but Border Protection was not.

The package puts no new limits on immigration enforcement, which has remained largely uninterrupted by the shutdown. The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions in extra funds to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the immigration officers are still being paid despite the lapse.

Democrats didn’t stop immigration enforcement. They didn’t defund ICE or the Border Patrol. They didn’t get any new concession on immigration-enforcement practices. All Schumer got from his latest shutdown was weeks of snarled travel for millions of Americans and an opportunity for ICE agents to engage in a public-relations lovefest in airports with voters who would otherwise have had little or no contact with the agency. 

Why cave now? Trump took their last bit of leverage off the table. Schumer wanted to create chaos in airports to keep pressure on Trump and the GOP to get his radical “reform” agenda adopted. At one point, Schumer and the White House appeared to have a deal on some concessions, but then Senate Democrats decided to walk away and demand their entire wish list. Trump then ordered new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to pay TSA agents out of other funds and order them back on the job, leaving Democrats with nothing at all to show for their weeks of disruption of Homeland Security in the middle of a war. 

The question now will be whether House Republicans will take yes for an answer, or whether they will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, a phrase that sounds Eliot-esque itself. The good news for Speaker Mike Johnson is that Schumer has revitalized the idea of reconciliation among Senate Republicans, who had not been enthusiastic about it until now. A reconciliation package will give them the opportunity to supplement the funds for ICE and CBP, but also could provide a path for major components of the SAVE America bill currently under debate. That may run into issues with the Senate Parliamentarian and the “Byrd Bath” process, but Schumer has made Senate Republicans angry enough that they could steamroll that process. 

Democrats may well end up with considerably less than nothing as a consequence for this stunt. Get ready for a lot of whimpering. 

Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans again, Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown II: TSA Boogaloo was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points. They own this. Again!

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