Terror attacks add heat to GOP's intraparty battle to fund Homeland Security

Congressional Republicans have no clear plan to avert a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, a nearly $40 billion-per-year agency whose funding is set to run out at the end of February, despite the recent terror attack in Paris and an upsurge in possible threats by the militant Islamic State group.

In a bid to appease conservatives and punish President Obama for taking executive action on immigration, Republicans did not provide full funding for the agency as part of a year-end spending deal in December. Now they risk losing credibility on a typical cornerstone issue for their party —  national security — by making avoidance of a DHS shutdown the first critical test of their new majority in the Senate.

The House is set to move this week on largely symbolic legislation that would fund the agency but also roll back several of the presidents’ immigration initiatives, including the new policy that would defer deportations for millions of undocumented Americans who have citizen children and 2012’s move that allowed undocumented children raised in the United States to attend college or enlist in the military.

House Republican leaders know this bill cannot pass the Senate and certainly would not be signed into law by the president, but they believe that by moving any bill this week, they are laying the groundwork to avoid a shutdown by giving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., enough time to craft a bill that could pass before the Feb. 27 deadline.

“We're moving early, not wholly because of, but partly because of, the fact that we want to have this debate and also provide enough time [for the Senate] to formulate their approach, to talk to their members, and we're not running up against the deadline,” a House GOP aide told Yahoo News.

Privately, Republican aides in both the House and Senate concede that the intraparty battle will be much more complicated, as conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas continue to push to defund Obama’s 2014 executive action on immigration with no clear vision on how to do so. Congress’ top Republican appropriator, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Hal Rogers, has said it would be “impossible” to roll back this executive action because the agency that oversees deportations is fee-funded and independent of Congressional bankrolling.

Conservatives who oppose the executive action say Congress maintains a constitutional role in funding the government, regardless of this reality, but they cannot pinpoint which programs within the Department of Homeland Security they would target specifically.

If previous standoffs are any indication, some members — and Cruz especially — may have little regard for the GOP leadership’s preferred course of action. At the end of 2014, Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, muddled year-end plans to move swiftly to avoid a government shutdown and put passage of spending bills in doubt. The temporary spending provision for DHS was in large part a result of their hard fight for the position that a Congress controlled by Republicans in both chambers could get a better deal on rolling back Obama's immigration action than a divided legislative branch could.

“Republican leadership in both Houses has promised publicly that they intend to fight in January and February and to use the funding for DHS to stop President Obama’s illegal amnesty. I very much hope we follow through on those public commitments and promises,” Cruz told Yahoo News in late December after the government shutdown was averted.

House Republican leaders are watching the Senate GOP intently as McConnell attempts to navigate his new majority caucus. Any legislation that comes through the Senate needs 60 votes to avoid a procedural filibuster, and McConnell’s GOP conference has 54 members, meaning any bill he proposes will need at least six Democrats but most likely more, because legislation that garners Democratic support is almost certain to lose GOP votes at the tea party margins.

Senate Democratic aides say they have no specific plans to highlight GOP divisions on this or to politicize DHS funding more than it already has been. They seem content to let Republicans go after each other as they also grapple with current events, like the high-profile terrorist attacks in France.

Meanwhile, there’s still a question of who newly elected Senate Republicans, like Joni Ernst, from the important caucus state of Iowa, might side with —  McConnell or Cruz — in the fight on immigration.

Cruz, for his part, campaigned for Ernst in the midterm elections as well as for David Perdue in Georgia and Dan Sullivan in Alaska and wrote checks to the campaigns of several others.