U.S. House Republican leadership says no new steps to avert DHS shutdown

After Senate Republican leadership made a major change of course to avert a partial shutdown in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Speaker of the House of the Representatives John Boehner said Wednesday his chamber would not take any new steps for now.

"I'm waiting for the Senate to pass a bill," Boehner told reporters. "I don't know what the Senate is capable of passing. Until I see what they're going to pass, no decision has been made on the House side."

"The House has passed a bill to fund the department, it's time for the Senate to do their job," Boehner added.

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

Senate Democrats have so far blocked the voting of the House- passed bill by filibusters four times in the past three weeks.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday outlined his new two-vote plan aimed at moving the DHS funding bill forward in the Senate. McConnell, a Republican from the state of Kentucky, said he was willing to put forward a "clean" DHS funding bill while separately addressing Obama's 2014 executive actions on immigration in a new stand-alone bill whose voting was slated for Friday.

Shortly after McConnell unveiled his new steps, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who lost his seat of Senate Majority Leader to McConnell in November, indicated that he wanted full surrender from Republicans in both chambers.

"The problem is, everybody, (that) I'm waiting to hear from the Speaker," said Reid after a weekly Democratic policy luncheon. "He 's (House Speaker Boehner) indicated to me through his staff that he'll be in touch sometime soon. And until that time comes, I think we're where we were."

Unlike Congressional Democrats, who are united in their fight to block the passing of any funding bill that also attacks Obama's immigration policies, divisions emerged among Republicans on the issue during the almost month-long partisan DHS funding fight.

After a federal judge recently ruled an injunction against Obama's 2014 immigration executive actions, a growing number of Senate Republicans urged their party leaders to grasp the escape hatch from the gridlock and left Obama's executive actions to the courts to handle.

However, the federal court order also made conservative Republicans harden their stance to address what they see as a power overreach by Obama in his last year's unilateral move to launch immigration policies that would shield as many as 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation. Endite