Obama Signs DHS Funding Bill

President Obama signed the full-year Fiscal Year 2015 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill into law on March 4, averting a shutdown of the agency.  The department, for the second week in a row, had faced a shutdown as lawmakers remained at odds over a controversial immigration provision. House Republicans ultimately agreed to withdraw the provision and on March 3 passed a “clean” bill that matched that approved by the Senate on February 27. 

DHS was the last of the Fiscal Year 2015 funding bills to be approved. Most of the federal government funding for fiscal 2015 was approved in December, but Congress originally provided funding for DHS only through February 27 in protest of the White House’s immigration policies.  Congress late last week had cleared another stop-gap funding bill, this time for just a week, as it hashed out differences over the immigration measure. 

Under a shutdown, DHS would have furloughed approximately 30,000 of its estimated 230,000 employees, with the rest working without pay. Most critical functions—including U.S. Customs and Border Patrol inspection and clearance activities, along with Transportation Security Administration airline passenger screening—would have continued.