Senate Republicans offer new steps to end gridlock on Homeland Security funding

After Democrats blocked for the fourth time on Monday a funding bill for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which sought to sabotage President Barack Obama's immigration policies, Republican leaders offered their Plan B as the DHS was catapulting toward a partial shutdown.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday night introduced a new stand-alone bill which targeted only Obama's controversial immigration initiatives and left funding the DHS aside.

A House-passed DHS funding bill which contains measures to roll back Obama's 2014 immigration policies had repeatedly hit a wall in the Senate, where Democrats demanded a "clean" bill.

McConnell said the new bill was aimed at taking away Democratic Senators' excuse for not voting against Obama's 2014 immigration actions.

Though a major change of course for Senate Republicans, the stand-alone immigration bill would mostly face the same fate as the previous funding bill. Democrats had blocked the debates on the bill by filibusters four times in the past three weeks.

McConnell did not mention whether a vote on a legislation of funding the DHS would follow the immigration vote.

The move came as an increasing number of Senate Republicans, including John McCain, Obama's Republican rival in his first 2008 bid for the White House, called for Congress to split off the immigration fight with funding the DHS. Endi