Seventy-two days into a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, the emergency reserve keeping Secret Service agents, TSA officers, and Border Patrol personnel on the payroll is nearly spent. Congress still has no deal, and what little money remains will likely be gone by the first week of May.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned lawmakers this week that the department cannot stretch its emergency fund much further. The reserve was drawn from a $10 billion stopgap established by the White House earlier this year. As of mid-April, roughly $1.4 billion remained. DHS payroll runs over $1.6 billion every two weeks. The math closes fast.
By some estimates, TSA officers may receive one more paycheck before the fund is exhausted. For Secret Service agents, the timeline is similar.
1,000 Officers Gone, and Airports Are Showing It
More than 1,000 TSA officers have resigned since the shutdown began, according to the department. The departures have already stretched staffing at several major airports, where security wait times have grown.
The squeeze has arrived at a particularly fraught moment for the Secret Service. Agents were deployed in force last Saturday when a California man armed with three weapons was stopped at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner security checkpoint and President Trump was evacuated from the venue. The agents who managed that incident are among those now facing the prospect of working without pay.
The shutdown covers the department’s full workforce of roughly 240,000 people. About 100,000 of them had already been working without pay when Mullin was confirmed to lead DHS in late March, stepping directly into a funding crisis that had dragged on for nearly two months before he was even sworn in.
Senate Passed a Bill. House Has Not Moved.
The Senate approved a bipartisan DHS funding measure weeks ago with broad support from both parties. The House has not voted on it.
House Republicans have attached a condition: before they will consider any DHS funding agreement, they want a separate reconciliation bill directing roughly $70 billion in new spending toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Until that bill advances, they say the Senate deal is a nonstarter.
The internal arithmetic has been brutal. With a narrow House majority, Republican leadership spent much of last week debating whether to abandon their own DHS proposal entirely, according to The Washington Post. No replacement has emerged.
Even the White House has grown impatient. Budget officials privately urged House Republicans this week to stand down and pass the Senate bill, CNN reported, a notable shift from an administration that had previously backed the two-step approach. The pressure has not yet moved the votes.
No Deal in Sight as Deadline Closes
The House returned to session this week with no deal in sight. Speaker Mike Johnson has not scheduled a floor vote on the Senate bill. House Democrats have called on him to do so.
If the emergency reserve expires without a replacement, federal law would require essential personnel — Secret Service agents, TSA officers, Border Patrol — to continue reporting to duty without compensation until Congress acts. Workers deemed non-essential would be furloughed.
The window to avoid that outcome is narrow. Moving any spending bill through both chambers and to the president’s desk typically takes several days at minimum, even under favorable conditions. With early May now days away, there is almost no room left for the usual congressional drift.
For the agents who secured the president’s exit from the correspondents’ dinner, for the TSA officers working gates at O’Hare and LAX and Dallas, the question is the same one it has been for 72 days: when does the paycheck stop?
Sources 6 cited · 1 primary
- Memorandum for the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget — Paying Our Great Transportation Security Administration Officers and Employees
- Mullin: DHS to run out of emergency funds to pay staff in early May
- DHS warns it will run out of money to pay airport security workers in coming weeks
- DHS shutdown: Congressional dysfunction imperils pay for TSA, Secret Service
- As Shutdown Drags On, DHS Warns Over 1,000 TSA Officers Have Left Jobs — and Staffers Are Set to Go Unpaid Again
- House takes step toward funding Homeland Security as White House warns money will 'soon run out'
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