WASHINGTON — The House cleared a Senate-passed bill funding most of the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, effectively ending an 11-week partial shutdown.

The bill, which the House sent to President Donald Trump’s desk on a voice vote, would fund all of the vast department — covering the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency and more — with the exception of immigration enforcement agencies. Republicans plan to fund those agencies through a separate filibuster-proof reconciliation bill over Democratic opposition in the coming weeks.

The decision by House leadership to push the bill through under suspension of the rules — after weeks of resistance and without a roll call vote — brought a surprisingly speedy conclusion to the longest partial shutdown in history.

Some House GOP conservatives had opposed the bill on the grounds that it zeroes out funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. Those agencies already have funding left unspent from last year’s reconciliation law and would be funded anew in the upcoming reconciliation bill.

But House GOP leaders decided to accept the Senate-passed bill without immigration enforcement funding after the Trump administration warned that it could no longer pay DHS employees through executive action and after seeing progress made on the plan to fund the immigration agencies through reconciliation.

The House adopted the budget resolution late Wednesday night that paves the way for the reconciliation bill, which Republicans say would provide about $70 billion in funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Republicans say this funding would last through the remainder of Trump’s term.

Trading blame

The shutdown began in mid-February after Democrats refused to fund the immigration agencies without new restrictions on immigration agents after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota earlier this year. Republicans refused to accept the key restrictions sought by Democrats — including requiring judicial warrants to enter private property — saying such measures would hamstring enforcement operations.

Even so, Democrats had pressed for weeks to pass the Senate bill that finally cleared Thursday, saying they always supported funding the rest of the department.

“It is about damn time that you come forward and do this,” House Appropriations ranking Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said during a brief floor debate. “We proposed this, I proposed it, 79 days ago.”

But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said adopting the budget resolution was “critically important” before Republicans would allow the Homeland Security funding bill to advance.

“We threw a fit, and we had to,” he told reporters after the vote. “We held the Homeland bill ... because we had to ensure that they could not isolate and eliminate those two critical agencies. We are getting those done now.”

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said that while he and other conservatives would have voted “no,” they allowed the voice vote because they knew it would have the support to pass under suspension, which requires the support of two-thirds of members present and voting to pass. He said adoption of the budget resolution allowed Republicans to feel more comfortable with the Senate bill that excluded immigration funding.

“By getting the budget passed and processed, that gives us comfort to be able to move forward,” he said. “That was always the issue.”

The twin votes this week aimed at ending the shutdown marked another test of leadership for Johnson, who has struggled to govern with a razor-thin GOP majority and a divided GOP conference.

“Despite unrelenting predictions for many of you today in the press that we would fail this week, we did exactly the opposite,” Johnson said in a show of pique over doubts about his leadership.

Once Trump signs the DHS bill, most of the department would be funded through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year, when the risk of another funding lapse begins.

Spy reauthorization

Both chambers of Congress are also expected to move a short-term extension of spy authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Thursday, ahead of next week’s recess.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said the House was waiting for the Senate, which plans to pass a “clean” extension of the program, with no changes.

The House on Wednesday passed a three-year renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that includes new provisions to address some privacy concerns.

But the House attached language that prohibits the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said is a nonstarter in the Senate.

Thune has floated a 45-day extension of the program, but said Thursday that he was waiting on a response from Democrats about how long of a punt they would accept.

“The Democrats are debating that right now,” he said. “I think we had suggested 45 days, but we’ll see what the traffic will bear.”

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(Valerie Yurk contributed to this report.)

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