The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump is urging lawmakers to come back from their paid recess and work on funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a press briefing that the president is calling on members to return to the nation’s capital, which they are not scheduled to do until their recess ends in two weeks. The call comes days after the president signed a memorandum directing DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to work with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents.
“The president has stepped in to do the right thing at this moment in time, but the president is also encouraging Congress to come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem and to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security entirely,” Leavitt said in response to a question from Politico.
Wait times at airport TSA checkpoints have skyrocketed due to the shutdown.
Leavitt said that Trump cannot just continue to sign memoranda and blasted Democrats for “holding our entire country hostage” with their demands for restrictions on funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“The president just can’t keep signing presidential memorandums and proclamations every time Congress fails to do its job, and every time Democrats are holding our entire country hostage, picking and choosing which programs and agencies they want to fund just because they don’t like this administration’s policies,” she said.
Earlier in her remarks, Leavitt said that “Democrats in Congress have pushed our air travel system to its breaking point and inflicted massive pain on Americans with their reckless political games” over the course of the six-week DHS shutdown.
She also noted, “nothing will be truly normal again until Democrats do the right thing to fund this agency fully.”