Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold tells
Newsmax TV that if the Department of Homeland Security's funding lapses because Congress doesn't agree on a funding measure, that the government will still have enough personnel to keep the nation safe.
"I don't think a shutdown will substantially decrease our ability to protect the country, certainly not a short term one with the majority of the folks at Homeland Security being essential personnel," Farenthold told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on Friday.
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"But a long-term one, I'm going to start to get worried after a couple of weeks," he added.
Senate Republicans failed for the second time Wednesday to pass the DHS bill without funding for President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration, which already
passed in the House. If a bill is not passed by Feb. 27, it will force all non-essential operations at the agency to shut down.
At this point, the Texas Republican says that "we can hold fast and not pass anything and see a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security."
However, he says that he's not entirely "sure how effective" shutting the agency down would be because the the numbers "show 95 percent of the Department of Homeland Security would be deemed essential government employees who could actually come to work if there were a lapse in funding.
"But it's certainly an option," he added.
Farenthold said his biggest fear is that "all the Democrats in Congress and a handful of Republicans . . . pass out something that doesn't stop the president's unconstitutional executive amnesty program."
The Texas lawmaker says the president's executive actions on amnesty are "unconstitutional."
"I took an oath to protect the Constitution and protecting the Constitution means not letting the president bypass the separation of powers," he explained.
"Immigration specifically was laid out in the Congress, giving the power of Congress to create a uniform system of naturalization," he said.
"It's given to Congress, not the president."