Among our area lawmakers, Republicans Jim Jordan of Urbana and Brad Wenstrup of Cincinnati opposed the three-week Homeland Security spending bill, while Republican Steve Chabot of Cincinnati supported it.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., who as speaker does not customarily vote, supported the measure while Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, was in Dayton for a funeral and did not vote, according to his spokeswoman Annie Clark.
In the Senate, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio voted against the Senate version to finance the department through the end of September while Democrat Sherrod Brown supported it.
Portman said he would support a short-term measure to finance Homeland Security to give the courts the time to decide whether Obama acted constitutionally. But he objected to the Senate version backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell because it did not include a repeal of Obama’s executive order on immigration.
“Congress has a responsibility to continue to try to stop the president’s executive action on immigration, which I believe is illegal and unconstitutional, and therefore I could not support the Senate legislation today,” Portman said.
(Jessica Wehrman and Jack Torry of the Washington Bureau contributed to this story.)