The White House Says It Sent a New ‘Serious Counter Offer’ on DHS Funding

As Transportation Security Administration workers and other employees at the Department of Homeland Security are set to miss paychecks this week, conversations between Senate Democrats and the White House to reopen the agency remain at an impasse.

The White House says it sent a new “serious counter offer” putting the ball back into Democrats’ court.

“The White House has made another serious counter offer,” a White House official told NOTUS in a statement Thursday. “Democrats need to make a move to end the shutdown before more Americans are harmed by a lack of funding for critical services like disaster relief.”

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked funding for the department for the second time, and are showing no sign of budging on their demands that reforms to immigration enforcement operations be included in the agency’s funding bill.

Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, told NOTUS on Thursday before the White House sent the counteroffer that Democrats would continue to vote against the package until it included several policy changes, including requirements for judicial warrants, limits on officers wearing masks and an end to roving patrols.

“Negotiation takes two sides, and as far as I’m seeing, I’m not seeing real intentionality and purpose coming from the other side,” Kim said. “After that State of the Union, I think it’s crystal clear, this is a president who is perfectly happy weaponizing parts of our government against the people.”

President Donald Trump briefly acknowledged the shutdown in his State of the Union address Tuesday, calling on Senate Democrats to end the funding lapse.

“Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, Homeland Security of the United States, and also for helping people clean up their snow,” Trump said, referring to the recent storm on the East Coast.

Ahead of the White House counteroffer, Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Thursday morning expressed some optimism that limits on travel and pay would allow negotiations to turn the corner soon.

“There’s a path, there has been for some time, there’s just got to be a sense of urgency,” Thune said Thursday. “I think that’s going to start coming as some of these agencies start seeing people who aren’t getting paid, or programs aren’t being funded.”

The agency announced earlier this week that it would suspend TSA PreCheck and Global Entry, a program that expedites arrival into the United States, through the duration of the shutdown, but officials quickly reversed the decision to pause TSA PreCheck.

DHS officials made those changes after Senate Democrats sent the White House the latest iteration of their demands last week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund is also running low, and the Trump administration announced it was freezing disaster aid to long-term recovery projects.

“It’s not ‘they’re stuck,’ but they’re, at the moment, slow moving,” Thune said, referencing the ongoing negotiations. “I’m hoping they’ll get unstuck soon, but there’s always hope of a breakthrough.”

Most Senate Democrats said that conversations about DHS funding on Capitol Hill had slowed while they were waiting on a response from the White House. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, had told reporters Wednesday that Democrats were waiting for the Trump administration to engage.

“We told them what our priorities were,” Murray said. “They answered back with a very, very weak, limited response, and we said, ‘No, this is what our requests were.’”

Sen. Chris Murphy, the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, also told NOTUS on Thursday that progress prior to the White House’s response had been limited.

“We’ve been pretty diligent about giving them proposals and compromises, and we get nothing, virtually nothing back,” Murphy said.

Some Democrats had previously floated the idea of separating funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the budget for the rest of the agency, which includes the Coast Guard and FEMA. But Thune said that tactic does not have support among Senate Republicans.

“We think the package should move all of those agencies that are under that appropriations bill,” Thune said. “I’m sure the Democrats would love to do that, but they all need to move together.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen told reporters prior to the Trump administration’s counteroffer that he did not expect the White House to engage seriously with Democrats’ demands. He added that the only path forward was for the White House to present “something meaningful” to address ICE operations.

“They haven’t really responded to the reforms that we insisted upon in reining in ICE,” Van Hollen said. “They don’t want accountability. They don’t want independent accountability. They want to be able to engage in sort of mass arrests and detentions.”