Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson tried to play the tough guy after the Senate passed a bill to fund DHS without any funding for ICE and Border Patrol.
Instead, Johnson Republicans and the House of Representatives passed a 60-day resolution after senators left the Capitol for the Easter recess.
Johnson was adamant that the majority of the House of Representatives would not pass any bill that did not include funding for ICE and Border Patrol.
When Trump was apparently unable to continue paying TSA workers, Johnson relented completely.
Less than a week later, here’s how Johnson changed his tune in a joint statement with Senate Majority Leader Thune:
We appreciate and share the President’s determination to end the Democratic DHS shutdown once and for all. In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives will follow the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process.
We appreciate that Senator Graham and the Senate Budget Committee have already initiated the process of developing a budget resolution that will ensure that border security and immigration enforcement will be funded for the balance of the Trump Administration and insulated from future efforts by Democrats to defund those agencies. We operated under the belief that, with our country in the midst of an international armed conflict, Democrats might finally come to their senses and understand that defunding our homeland security agencies is extremely reckless and very dangerous.
The problem is that Johnson currently does not have the votes in the House of Representatives to pass a reconciliation bill.
It remains uncertain how Republicans will pass a reconciliation bill, but that hasn’t stopped Johnson and Thune from blaming Democrats for their cave.
