Top lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee insist they can regain their bipartisan footing even as political clashes dominate many of their proceedings this year.
The historically sedate panel has become a forum for partisan fireworks, largely driven by the GOP majority’s focus on border security, an area that draws intense and sometimes angry engagement from both sides of the aisle.
“There’s less bipartisanship as it relates to the border, but the other aspects of homeland security, there’s a great deal of bipartisanship, and we are going to continue to work together in those areas,” Vice Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) said.
“Less bipartisanship” on the border is an understatement. Democrats boycotted a Texas field hearing earlier this year, alleging political gamesmanship by the majority. Republicans riled the other side by unveiling the text of a sweeping border security bill just two days before a contentious markup that stretched past midnight.
And one hearing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on April 19 turned hostile when GOP firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) lobbed unrelated salacious accusations against a Democratic colleague. The exchange and subsequent arguments among members overshadowed the hearing and ate into the panel’s limited time to question the secretary.
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Continued political spats and frayed relationships could undermine the committee’s ability to oversee the Department of Homeland Security effectively and pass critical legislation on cybersecurity, disaster response, and other areas.
Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), a member of the punchy House Freedom Caucus, is projecting confidence about the panel’s ability to return to its bipartisan roots and said he doesn’t think early clashes have permanently soured any relationships.
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But tensions persist among members, as many Republicans complain the minority doesn’t take border security seriously, and Democrats say their GOP counterparts are ignoring other major homeland priorities.
“It’s become nothing more than the border, and that’s going to always bring out the most extreme on their side,” said Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), a returning member of the committee.
While the committee has finished its work on the GOP border bill (
BGOV Bill Summary: H.R. 2, GOP Border Security Package
High Stakes
The stakes for committee cooperation are high. Created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, DHS is the third largest Cabinet agency and has a sweeping portfolio that includes immigration, cybersecurity, emergency management, counterterrorism, and other areas.
Many lawmakers and outside critics have called on Congress to overhaul the department’s structure, revise its mission to reflect evolving threats to the US, and ramp up routine oversight. Yet these goals proved elusive even in the more bipartisan atmosphere of past sessions.
“DHS has a great many problems that need to be solved,” said former DHS counterterrorism official Tom Warrick, now at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council. “There are issues on which bipartisan consensus is still possible, and it really will be up to the chairman to decide whether he wants to use the next few years in an effort to try to solve those problems.”
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Green, who says he’s eager to address DHS organizational challenges, played down recent clashes on the committee as a “kerfuffle” and pointed to a May 17 markup of bipartisan cybersecurity and drone bills (
“Did you see how the two got together and went in the back room and fixed the amendment?” Green said in an interview the following week. “That was pretty cool.”
Lingering frustrations, however, were also on display during that markup. Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the committee’s longtime top Democrat, pleaded with colleagues to return to the panel’s reputation for bipartisanship.
“The hyperpartisan way the committee has been operating this Congress runs counter to that reputation,” he said, adding that the panel’s heated 17-hour markup of GOP border legislation in April was “still fresh in our collective memory.”
‘Marching Orders’
To Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), the panel’s friction so far is just a natural dynamic of a new Congress, with committee members jabbing one another to suss out “how tough are you, how tough am I.”
“We got through those what I would call ‘getting to know each other’ meetings, and now I think we’re settling down to work together,” he said. Many members have served on the committee before and have existing relationships to work from.
Forthcoming hearings and legislative pushes planned on cybersecurity and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — two areas that typically generate more cross-party alignment — may be a chance for those bipartisan relationships to grow. Green said he plans to meet with Thompson on a cybersecurity strategy and wants him “involved the whole way through.”
Andrew Howell, a partner at the lobbying firm Monument Advocacy, said he’s been “pleasantly surprised” by early signs of bipartisan cooperation on cybersecurity and critical infrastructure this year.
Still, border-related tensions are sure to flare up again and again.
“That’s their marching orders, that’s their drill,” longtime committee member Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) said of Republicans. “It just disrupts so many other things.”
Border hawks defend the committee’s focus, however polarizing, as a necessary level of oversight that was lacking under previous leadership.
“Bipartisanship is not an end unto itself,” said Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Members need to be realistic about facts on the ground and act accordingly.”
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