Lawmakers and the administration continue to butt heads on the details of a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security and avert an agency shutdown.

The bill — passed by the House Jan. 14— boosts overall funding by $400 million over 2014 levels. But the legislation also defunds many aspects of President Obama's recent actions on immigration, including a program that allows immigrant children to remain in the country.

Congress has already funded the rest of the government in December, but the DHS funding was cut short to provide an opportunity for further debate on immigration issues. The current continuing resolution for the agency expires at the end of February.

Now 44 members of the House are urging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, D-Ky., to schedule debate on the bill as soon as possible, writing in a letter that the Senate must consider the bill as its next order of business.

"We believe that Senate Republicans must honor the promise they made to the American people last year to stand firm against the President's lawless actions and preserve Congress' constitutional role as a lawmaking body," the house Republicans wrote.

But even if the Senate debates and passes the bill, the administration has released a statement saying senior advisers are recommending President Obama veto the bill because of the defunding language.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson has also weighed in, urging Congress to strip out the language in the bill defunding administration immigration efforts and instead fully fund anti-terrorism efforts. Without a full-year funding bill DHS cannot make needed investments in security and personnel, Johnson said.

"Recent world events - the terrorist attacks in Paris, Ottawa, Sydney, and elsewhere, along with the public calls by terrorist organizations for attacks on Western objectives - call for increased vigilance in homeland security," he said.

On Jan. 27 a group of Senate Democrats wrote a letter calling on the Senate to pass a DHS funding bill without any defunding language. Senators Tom Carper, D-Del., Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said the continuing emergence of new threats shows the importance of DHS funding.

"We should not cast doubt on future funding for the Department of Homeland Security at a time when the entire nation should be marshalling collective resources to defend against terrorism," they wrote.

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