共和党领袖计划让国会维持休会状态,尽管要求结束国土安全部停摆的压力与日俱增


2026-03-30T21:50:59.224Z / 美国有线电视新闻网(CNN)

作者:安妮·格雷尔、摩根·里默
发布于 2026年3月30日,美国东部时间下午5:50

2026年3月26日的美国国会大厦
内森·霍华德/路透社/资料图

议员们已经离开华盛顿开启春假,目前国会在国土安全部拨款问题上陷入僵局。但即便他们离开国会山的举动受到越来越多公众审视,共和党领袖仍没有迹象表明会强迫议员提前返会协商达成协议。

南卡罗来纳州共和党参议员林赛·格雷厄姆周末在佛罗里达州迪士尼世界餐厅用餐的照片被八卦媒体TMZ曝光,与此同时民主党众议员罗伯特·加西亚被拍到出现在拉斯维加斯的赌场。这些照片在周一迅速在社交媒体上传播,引发了强烈反弹。

作为特朗普的关键盟友,格雷厄姆表示他此前在南佛罗里达会见了特朗普政府官员史蒂夫·威科夫,讨论沙特阿拉伯与以色列关系正常化问题,之后才前往奥兰多与朋友会面。加西亚的办公室则表示,他当时正在探亲,一旦共和党召集议员返会,他将立即返回华盛顿特区。

但在国土安全部仍处于停摆状态时议员们外出度假的相关画面,正在加大要求共和党领导的国会缩短原定的复活节和逾越节休会期的压力。这也暴露了共和党领导层在为这个关键机构拨款、结束停摆的最佳路径上存在分歧,而停摆目前没有任何缓和的迹象。

“我真的、真的、真的受够了,”共和党众议员杰夫·范·德鲁周一在接受CNN采访时谈及停摆相关政治时说道,“我真的很愤怒。受够了这一切。坦率地说,双方都有责任。没人在这件事上是清白的。”

范·德鲁所在的新泽西选区拥有全美最大的海岸警卫队训练中心,他对议员们在未能达成全面重新开放国土安全部协议的情况下返家休假感到愤怒,目前仍有数千名联邦工作人员无薪工作,其中包括海岸警卫队的文职雇员。

相关报道:2026年1月24日,一场大型暴风雪袭击美国大部分地区时,一名FEMA雇员在华盛顿特区联邦紧急事务管理局总部的国家响应协调中心工作。奥利维耶·杜利耶/阿巴卡/西帕美国/美联社/资料图

国土安全部哪些人员能领到工资,哪些不能 | 阅读时长3分钟

范·德鲁加入了越来越多面临政治压力的共和党人行列,他们呼吁共和党领袖取消休会,召集议员返回华盛顿特区,直到达成协议为止。白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·利夫特周一表示,唐纳德·特朗普总统“鼓励”国会返会寻找解决方案,她指出总统此前已下令国土安全部单方面支付运输安全管理局员工的工资,以缓解近期的旅行混乱,而当国会未能履行职责时,总统不能一直这样介入。

问题的一部分在于众议院和参议院在前进道路上意见不一。两个由共和党领导的议院各自通过了相互竞争的国土安全部拨款方案,随后便离开华盛顿,没有制定计划来化解分歧、结束停摆。

参议院在周五凌晨通过了一项两党协议,旨在重新开放国土安全部,但关键是该协议不会为边境和移民部门提供资金,随后参议院便在多数华盛顿民众熟睡时休会。瑟恩辩称,共和党已于去年夏天通过特朗普的全面国内政策法案,为政府的边境巡逻和移民执法工作提供了数十亿美元资金。

与此同时,众议院共和党人直接否决了参议院的法案,约翰逊称参议院的操作“是个笑话”,并通过了一项为整个国土安全部提供资金的方案,尽管该方案几乎没有在参议院通过的可能。一名众议院领导层助手指出,众议院已四次通过为整个部门拨款的法案,而参议院一次都没有通过过。

众议院议长迈克·约翰逊和参议院多数党领袖约翰·瑟恩都认为,应该由对方先召集议员返会,因为各自通过的方案与对方相悖。即便共和党已公开将责任完全推给民主党,两位领导人似乎都不愿让步。而民主党则不断指出,他们并未控制任何一个议院。

瑟恩私下告知其党团会议,他不打算为另一场“作秀投票”中断参议院的休会期,除非有与民主党达成的协议,否则不会召集参议员返回华盛顿。

“参议院要返会,就得有可供审议的内容,”一名参议院共和党助手告诉CNN,“既然民主党会否决众议院通过的法案,我们就没有可供审议的内容。”

周一原本有机会通过一场无需处理其他事务的简短参议院会议——也就是所谓的“形式上会议”,来审议众议院的国土安全部法案,但无人采取行动。当时在参议院会议厅的北达科他州共和党参议员约翰·霍文告诉记者,他没有这么做是因为民主党参议员克里斯·孔斯在场会提出反对,他知道此举会失败。

“这区别在于,这更像是一场作秀投票,如果你愿意这么说的话,而非真正努力争取获得立法全部或部分条款的同意,”霍文说道,“请记住,我们不仅在与民主党谈判,也在与众议院的同事进行谈判。”

孔斯则反驳了外界对参众两院在国土安全部停摆期间离开华盛顿开启两周休会的不满。

“你们很清楚,我们并没有‘放假’,”特拉华州议员孔斯说道,他补充道,“我们每天都在本州开展工作。对我们大多数人来说,这正是我们有时间在本州各地走访、与选民会面的时段。”

即便共和党领袖召集议员返回美国国会大厦,出席率可能仍是一个主要问题,因为议员们通常会在国会休会期间安排出国工作行程以及在选区举办活动。

格雷厄姆的一名发言人表示,参议员本周余下时间在本州已有活动安排。

加西亚的发言人萨拉·格雷罗在一份声明中告诉CNN,该众议员“家族在拉斯维加斯拥有一处房产,他的父亲已经在那里居住了15年多,他当时是去探望父亲。正如约翰逊议长让国会休会时他所说的那样,共和党人拒绝接受摆在桌面上的协议,却让议员们回家,而美国民众正在受苦,这太荒谬了。”

众议员唐·培根认为这些八卦媒体照片是在转移人们对更大问题的注意力。

“这是‘钓鱼式政治’,”这位内布拉斯加州共和党人谈及TMZ曝光的照片时说道,“真正令人尴尬的是,今年到目前为止我们已经经历了两次最长时间的政府停摆,这太 dysfunctional(功能失调)了。如果人们愿意寻求共识,这件事本不该这么难解决。”

范·德鲁提出,确保国土安全部停摆结束的最快方法,不仅是取消国会议员的工资,还要阻止他们领取补发工资。

“你们无法齐心协力完成预算工作?那好吧。你们拿不到工资。只有当所有人都重返工作岗位时,你们才能领到工资,而且顺便说一句,你们也别想拿到补发工资。你们已经失去了这个资格。这样一来,你们就不会再遭遇政府停摆了,”他说道。

CNN记者莎拉·费里斯对本文亦有贡献。

GOP leaders plan to keep Congress out of session even as pressure to end DHS shutdown grows

2026-03-30T21:50:59.224Z / CNN

By Annie Grayer, Morgan Rimmer

PUBLISHED Mar 30, 2026, 5:50 PM ET

The US Capitol on March 26, 2026.

Nathan Howard/Reuters/File

Lawmakers have departed Washington for spring recess locked in a stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. But even as their movements outside the halls of Congress face increased public scrutiny, Republican leaders are showing no signs they’ll force their members to come back early to hash out a deal.

Photos of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham dining in Florida at Disney World over the weekend surfaced in tabloid TMZ, while Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia was spotted at a casino in Las Vegas. The images drew swift backlash as they rapidly spread across social media Monday.

The senator, a key Trump ally, said he had met with Trump official Steve Witkoff in South Florida for discussions on normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, before meeting friends in Orlando after. And the congressman was visiting family, his office noted, and will return to Washington, DC, as soon as Republicans call members back into session.

But the optics of the lawmakers traveling as the DHS remains shut down is ratcheting up pressure on the Republican-led Congress to shorten their previously scheduled Easter and Passover break. And it is exposing how GOP leadership is at odds about the best path forward to fund the key agency and end a shutdown that shows no signs of abating.

“I’m just really, really, really tired of it,” GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew told CNN of the shutdown politics Monday. “I’m really pissed off. Really sick of it. Quite frankly there’s fault on both sides. Nobody’s pure in this.”

Van Drew’s New Jersey district is home to the largest Coast Guard training center in the country, and he is furious that lawmakers returned home for the recess without a deal to fully reopen DHS, where thousands of federal workers are still going without pay, including Coast Guard civilian employees.

Related article A FEMA employee works at the National Response Coordination Center, at the headquarters for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, DC, on January 24, 2026, as a major winter storm affected much of the country. Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa USA/AP/File Here’s who is getting paid at DHS and who isn’t 3 min read

Van Drew joins a growing chorus of Republicans, under political pressure, who are arguing that their GOP leaders should cancel recess and bring lawmakers back to Washington, DC, until a deal is done. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that President Donald Trump is “encouraging” Congress to return to find a solution, arguing the president — who has ordered DHS to unilaterally pay Transportation Security Administration employees to alleviate recent travel chaos — cannot continually step in when Congress fails to do its job.

Part of the problem is the House and Senate are not on the same page about the path forward. The two Republican-led chambers passed competing proposals for how to fund DHS and left town without a plan to rectify their differences and end the shutdown.

The Senate passed a bipartisan deal to reopen DHS in the early morning hours of Friday that would have reopened the agency, critically without funding for the border and immigration departments, and then left town as much of Washington slept. Republicans, Thune argued, had already provided billions in funding to the administration’s border patrol and immigration enforcement efforts through Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package last summer.

House Republicans, meanwhile, rejected the Senate legislation outright, with Johnson calling the Senate’s maneuver’s “a joke,” and sent back a package that would fund all of DHS, even though it has no chance of passing in the Senate. The House, a leadership aide noted, has four times passed a bill to fund the entire department, whereas the Senate has not done so a single time.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune believe the ball is in the other’s court to call their members back to session after each passed a plan at odds with the other. Neither leader appears willing to blink even though Republicans have publicly placed the blame solely on Democrats. And Democrats continually point to the fact that they do not control either chamber.

Thune privately told his conference that he does not plan to interrupt his chamber’s recess for another “show vote,” and won’t bring senators back to Washington until there is a deal with Democrats to do so.

“In order for the Senate to come back, you’d need something for the Senate to consider,” a Senate GOP aide told CNN. “And since Democrats would kill the House-passed bill, we don’t have something to consider.”

When Republican senators had the chance Monday to take up the House DHS package through a brief Senate session where no business was conducted, called a “pro forma,” no one took it. North Dakota GOP Sen. John Hoeven, who was in the chamber, told reporters he did not take that step because with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons in the chamber to object, he knew it would fail.

“It’s the difference between just doing it as kind of a show vote, if you will, and actually working to try to get consent on all or some part of the legislation we passed,” said Hoeven. “So, we are having that negotiation, remember, not only with Democrats, but with our colleagues in the House.”

Coons, for his part, pushed back against building frustration that the Senate and House have left Washington for a two-week recess, even as DHS remains shut down.

“You know well that we’re not ‘off,’” said Coons of Delaware, adding, “We’re working every day in our home states. For most of us, this is when we have the time to go up and down our state and to meet with our constituents.”

Even if GOP leaders were to call their members back to the US Capitol, attendance would likely be a major concern given lawmakers typically schedule international work trips and events in their districts when Congress isn’t in session.

A spokesperson for Graham said the senator has events planned throughout the state the rest of the week.

Garcia spokesperson Sara Guerrero told CNN in a statement that the congressman’s “family owns a home in Vegas, his father has been living there for over 15 years and he was visiting him. As he stated the day Speaker Johnson sent Congress home, it is crazy for Republicans to reject the deal on the table and send members home while the American people suffer.”

Rep. Don Bacon dismissed the tabloid photographs as a distraction from the larger problem.

“It’s gotcha-politics,” the Nebraska Republican said of the emerging TMZ images. “The real embarrassing thing is we’ve had the two longest shutdowns this part year and it is dysfunctional. This shouldn’t have been hard to sole if people were willing to find consensus.”

The fastest way to ensure the DHS shutdown ends, Van Drew suggested, is to not only take away the paychecks to members of Congress, but also to prevent them from receiving back pay.

“You can’t get your act together to get a budget done? Guess what. You’re not getting paid. You get paid when everybody is back to work and by the way you’re never going to get that back pay. You lost it. Then you’re not going to have any more shutdowns,” he argued.

CNN’s Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

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