By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
The White House strongly rebuked a one-week funding extension for the Department of Homeland Security, calling it reflective of the House's "failed" Republican leadership.
"That is bad policy," White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters, who added that President Barack Obama was "disappointed" that he had to sign the short-term funding bill.
"The fact that the president had to sign a seven-day extension doesn't just reflect a bad decision made by the Republican leadership in the House, it reflects the failed leadership of the Republican leadership in the House," he said
The House voted 357-60 late Friday night to fund Homeland Security for one week. The Senate also lent its approval, and Obama signed the bill shortly before the agency that guards America’s borders was to run out of funding.
Unlike all other departments, congressional Republicans singled out Homeland Security last year for short-term funding in a bid to force Obama to reverse course on executive actions he took to shield nearly 5 million undocumented migrants from deportation.
Lawmakers now have until midnight Friday to continue funding for the department.
Doubt on Netanyahu's Iran strategy
“No one else has laid out a strategy for how to accomplish what apparently the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] has laid out as his goal. He hasn't even laid out a strategy for how to accomplish his goal,” Earnest also told reporters.
He cast doubt on a possible military solution to the prime minister’s stated goals. “It would require not just a detailed destruction of Iran's infrastructure, but it also would require the removal of knowledge that Iran has already obtained,” he said.
Earnest’s comments came a day before Netanyahu is expected to address a joint session of Congress to rally opposition against international negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program.
The nuclear talks have until the end of the month to produce a political framework agreement ahead of an end of June deadline for a final comprehensive deal.
Pressed by reporters, Earnest said Netanyahu’s speech would not have “much of an impact” on the final outcome of the talks.
A senior Israeli official traveling with Netanyahu who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters on the flight from Israel that Netanyahu had details of the forming deal that he believed American lawmakers needed to know.
Earnest said if the information in question came from classified briefings Washington holds with Israeli officials, “The release of that information would betray the trust between our allies, and it certainly is inconsistent with the behavior of trusted allies.”
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf stressed, however, that “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and there are a lot of rumors out there and reports of people either, you know, making, you know, flatly incorrect statements or cherry-picking bits and pieces of things they may have heard to try and advance an agenda.”
Secretary of State John Kerry is currently in Montreux, Switzerland, to meet with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Zarif, for a new round of nuclear talks.
Those negotiations are expected to continue for multiple hours through Tuesday, Harf said.
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