DHS budgetDHS shutdown would have only limited immediate impact on national security: Analysts
If Congress fails to act before the 27 February funding deadline, most DHS operations would continue. During the October 2013 government shutdown, 85 percent of DHS employees remained on the job. Just a little over 30,000 of the department’s 230,000 employees, mostly in managerial and administrative positions, were furloughed.
Talk of a halt of DHS operations if Congress does not approve the Republican-proposed DHS funding bill has dominated news and policy circles in recent days. In the Senate, Democrats refuse to pass the House-approved funding bill as long as it contains wording which would defund efforts to carry out the White House’s immigration policies, which extends deferred deportation to undocumented immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children (Dreamers) via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and some undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents via the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA).
Earlier this week, the Homeland Security News Wire reported that a federal judge had already placed an injunction on President Barack Obama’s immigration efforts (see “Federal judge in Texas temporarily blocks Obama’s executive order,” HSNW, 18 February 2015). Still Congress has yet to pass the DHS funding bill.
Slate Magazine explored what would happen if Congress fails to act before the 27 February funding deadline, and found that most DHS operations would continue. Not approving DHS’s $40 billion budget for some time “is obviously not the end of the world,” said Representative Matt Salmon (R-Arizona), noting that many agency employees would still report to work through a shutdown.
During the October 2013 government shutdown, 85 percent of DHS employees remained on the job. Just a little over 30,000 of the department’s 230,000 employees, mostly in managerial and administrative positions, were furloughed. According to CNN, a Congressional Research Service report says that federal employees “whose work is necessary for the preservation of the safety of human life or the protection of property” would continue to receive pay outside of the appropriations process.
New DHS grants allocated to help states and cities pay for security improvements will, however, be placed on hold, according to a statement from DHS chief Jeh Johnson. Those grants, Slate reports, pay for a host of projects including New York City Police Department surveillance cameras, as well as upgrading “obsolete remote video surveillance systems” near the Texas-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. Johnson adds that his department needs a full-year appropriations bill, and not a short-term fix, so it can keep issuing those grants.
Still, a shutdown of DHS via defunding would not put the nation at additional risk. “The reality is that a department shutdown would have a very limited impact on national security,” the Yahoo News notes.
