A Senate Democratic filibuster of the Department of Homeland Security funding bill suggests “there will be a DHS shutdown which would be harmful to our national security,” a spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said Thursday.
“Senate Democrats have made clear they will not even end [their] filibuster on the DHS funding bill,” Alex Conant, a spokesman for Rubio, wrote to the Huffington Post. “The result will be a DHS shutdown which would be harmful to our national security. The answer is not for Republicans to surrender and pass a clean funding bill. The answer is for the President and Senate Democrats to abandon the executive order and cooperate in passing a series of immigration bills beginning with real border security.”
Conant made the comment after reporters construed Rubio’s Tuesday statemen that “we can’t let Homeland Security shut down” as a sign that he is willing to yield in the current fight over whether Republicans can pass a DHS funding bill that also blocks implementation of Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
“Senator Rubio does not support shutting down DHS,” Conant wrote. “But he does support stopping the new executive order on immigration and is willing to support any approach we could get passed to stop it.”