In a bit of a surprise, the House is sending President Obama a bill to fund Homeland Security through year's end, without conditions. Reaction is coming in:
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont:
“After weeks of an unnecessary, self-made crisis, the House finally has agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security. This is welcome news for the department’s 2,500 workers in Vermont, their co-workers around the country and for a nation that depends on them to help keep us safe. With growing threats from ISIS and other terrorists around the world, it was beyond belief that Republicans in the House were even thinking of shutting down the department. I hope that Speaker Boehner’s belated step means that he will no longer give free-rein to the most petulant right-wing extremists in his caucus.”
New York Democrat Paul Tonko of the 20th District:
"After months of lurching from one manufactured crisis to the next, House Leadership finally listened to reason and gave the clean DHS funding bill the up-or-down vote needed to maintain our national security. I hope this will serve as a teaching moment to Congress that we govern best when we work together. Keeping our country safe and providing routine funding to agencies that keep our nation working should not be a partisan, dramatic process. The American people work hard and achieve results, and they should see the same out of their elected leaders."
New York Republicans Peter King, Chris Gibson, Richard Hanna, Chris Collins, John Katko and Elise Stefanik:
“We will be voting in support today of legislation to fund DHS for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2015. While we strongly disagree with the unilateral actions that President Obama has taken, we believe the courts – not cutting off funding for the entire Department – is the most effective way to stop his actions. We support the federal lower court decision that put an injunction on the executive actions taken by the President, and we believe it should be upheld. Furthermore, moving forward, we hope to work in a bipartisan way to reform our broken immigration system through legislative action. However, DHS is critical to our national security – ISIS is a real threat to America, and we must provide full funding to keep New York and our country safe. We urge the rest of our colleagues to join us in supporting legislation to fund DHS.”