Homeland Security: What will happen if it is shut down?

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Spending for the Department of Homeland Security hangs in the balance as Congress fights over immigration matters in the agency’s annual funding bill. Without action by Feb. 27, the department’s budget will shut off.

To hear Democrats and many Republicans tell it, the result would be unacceptable risks to U.S. security at a time of grave threats worldwide. In reality, though, most people will see little change if the department’s money flow is halted, and some of the warnings of doom are as exaggerated as they are striking.

“There are ghoulish, grim predators out there who would love to kill us or do us harm,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We should not be dillydallying and playing parliamentary pingpong with national security.”

In the view of some House conservatives, though, shutting off the agency’s $40 billion budget for a time “is obviously not the end of the world,” as Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., put it, because many agency employees would stay at work through a shutdown.

Who’s right, and what would the impact be if Congress were to let money for the department lapse?

Salmon and a few other conservatives are the only ones saying it publicly so far, but the reality is that a department shutdown would have a very limited impact on national security.

That’s because most department employees fall into exempted categories of workers who stay on the job in a shutdown because they perform work considered necessary to protect human life and property. Even in a shutdown, most workers across agencies, including the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection, would continue to report to work.

Airport security checkpoints would remain staffed, the Secret Service would continue to protect the president and other dignitaries, the Coast Guard would stay on patrol, immigration agents would still be on the job.

Of the agency’s approximately 230,000 employees, some 200,000 of them would keep working even if Congress fails to fund their agency. It’s a reality that was on display during the 16-day government-wide shutdown in the fall of 2013, when essential government functions kept running.