As they plan to approve a budget resolution this week, Senate Republican leaders are facing internal divisions about the scope of their party-line bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol for four years.
Some want to limit the bill to just immigration enforcement. Others want to broaden it out to include other GOP priorities, fearing this will be their last chance to pass a major bill without Democratic support before the midterms.
The party’s ability to resolve the matter will be crucial to the endgame of funding the Department of Homeland Security, which is in a record-long shutdown of 66 days and counting. That’s because House Republicans are holding up the Senate-passed bill to fund the rest of DHS — including TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard — until the upper chamber moves on the party-line bill.
Adopting the budget on the floor could be enough for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to allow a House vote on that DHS bill. It would trigger the process of crafting filibuster-proof legislation that can bypass the Senate’s 60-vote rule and cut Democrats out of the process for the purpose of funding ICE and Border Patrol.
But if Senate Republicans get tied up in knots over the budget, the DHS bill could remain stalled. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to move money around to give back pay to TSA agents so they return to work, but it’s unclear if they’ll get another paycheck without a new law to approve funding.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he wants to keep the bill “skinny” and focused solely on ICE and Border Patrol. And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Budget Committee chairman, told NBC News that nothing else is guaranteed because it needs to get the votes. Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three of their 53 members on the vote.
“I think we need to put as much in there as we can get,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who called for including Iran war funding and attempting to add funding-related provisions from the SAVE America Act, a Trump-backed voting bill. “Only thing we've gotten done in the last year is the big, beautiful bill. Now we're gonna have one this year. Let's put a saddle on it and ride it, and see how much we can get done.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., has also called for trying to pass elements of the SAVE America Act in reconciliation, although the author of the bill, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, insists it was not designed for the budget process and isn’t eligible for it.
That’s not all. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he’s “vigorously” pushing Republicans to add tax cut provisions to it such as “indexing capital gains to inflation.”
“Right now, leadership’s plan is to have the skinny, anorexic bill that just has funding for ICE and [CBP]. I think that is short-minded, short-sighted,” Cruz said last week on Fox Business. “We shouldn’t miss this opportunity to go big.”
“There ain’t gonna be another reconciliation,” Cruz said. “This is the only train that is leaving the station. If we want to do something big and bold before the midterm elections, we either do it now, or we’re going to end up missing altogether.”
Tuberville similarly predicted there won’t be another Republican-only bill.
“We might as well go home after this one,” he said.
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