Senate Republicans bypassed an opportunity on Monday to try to force a quick end to the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the closure in place while lawmakers remained on a two-week recess with no resolution in sight.
Despite urging from House G.O.P. leaders, Senate Republicans did not try to use a brief ceremonial session on Monday morning to push through an eight-week extension of funding for the agency, which Democrats had said they would object to.
Instead, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, who presided over the roughly 30-second session, said lawmakers were continuing to discuss how to proceed.
“If we had something good to go today, we could have done it today, but we weren’t quite ready,” Mr. Hoeven told reporters at the Capitol afterward. “We continue to negotiate.”
Even if Republicans had attempted to plunge ahead, Democrats would have been able to block the effort with a single objection. They have said that a funding measure approved by the Senate early Friday — which would not fund immigration enforcement — was the surest way out of the impasse, because it represented a bipartisan agreement to end the shutdown.
“I’m here to object to any effort to undo that,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, who ultimately did not have to speak since Republicans made no move to push ahead with the House measure. “We followed the process, followed the rules and funded the government.”
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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