Shutdown looms: 7 Republicans join Senate Dems’ agenda to block spending bills

Seven Republicans in the U.S. Senate on Thursday joined the Democrats’ agenda to shut down the government – again – over spending bills.

Democrats want huge changes to the Department of Homeland Security budget, which includes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement that has been running national border and immigration law enforcement campaigns in the Minneapolis area.

Senate Democrats have been threatening for days that they will vote to shut down the government, as they did for six weeks last fall, a move that was prompted then by their unsuccessful demands Congress raid taxpayers’ bank accounts for a trillion dollars for their pet projects.

A report from Fox News said Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority chief in the Senate, was demanding the removal of DHS funding from a broad funding package.

The report described it as “surprising” that seven GOP members joined the effort.

Those Republicans are Sens. Ted Budd, R-N.C., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Mike Lee, R- Utah, Ashley Moody, R-Fla., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.

Democrats, the report said, “stayed true to their threat by blocking a behemoth funding package.”

Schumer, the New York Democrat who led last fall’s campaign to shut down the government, has been demanding big changes in the ICE funding,

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has thrown cold water on Democrats’ insistence on reforms to ICE funding.

He said there is “a path to consider” such changes, but they were not going to happen in this bill.

One option for the GOP is for them to strip DHS funding from the broad package of six bills pending. Other funding could be approved and then DHS budget requirements could be addressed in a continuing resolution.