Senate Republicans are planning a vote as soon as next week on a budget blueprint that would pave the way for a party-line vote to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) announced on April 14.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 59 days. While ICE and CBP are funded due to last year’s tax-and-spend megabill, agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been without funding due to deadlock over Senate Democrats’ demands for reforms to immigration enforcement.
A bill to fund all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol has passed the Senate and is pending in the House.
Separately, Republicans are looking to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years, or the rest of President Donald Trump’s administration, through a process called reconciliation. This allows bills related to taxing, spending, and the national debt to pass the Senate with a simple majority and not be subject to the 60-vote procedural threshold that applies to most legislation.
For a reconciliation bill to be passed, both the House and Senate must first approve an identical budget resolution that has the priorities of what the subsequent bill will look like.
“Republicans have tried repeatedly, not only through the bipartisan appropriations process, to ensure that the department and all the agencies and all the employees and all the functions are funded,” Thune said during a press conference. “We try to do it that way.”
“Democrats have blocked it,” he continued. “We tried to clean extensions, continuing resolutions that would fund those agencies, and those were also blocked by the Democrats. So the Democrats can’t seem to take yes or an answer on anything.”
Thune estimated the price tag of the bill will be between $65 billion and $70 billion.
The shutdown initially led to long lines and wait times at airports nationwide as hundreds of TSA agents called out sick or quit as they were not receiving a paycheck, before Trump signed an executive order in late March to allocate funds to pay TSA workers.
Separately, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced on March 25 that the Senate Budget Committee, under his leadership, will draft a second reconciliation bill focused on homeland security, defense, and election integrity. He said the effort follows discussions with Trump and Thune and emphasized that national security remains the federal government’s top priority.
“The number one priority of the federal government has always been keeping our homeland safe and keeping our enemies at bay over there so they can’t hit us here,“ he said in a statement. ”While federal law enforcement spending represents about only one percent of the federal budget, what these men and women can accomplish with it is incredible.”
At the same time, the Trump administration is seeking roughly $200 billion in supplemental defense funding tied to the ongoing conflict with Iran, in addition to increased military spending approved last year.
Despite Republican control of Congress, the proposal faces challenges. Some fiscal conservatives have raised concerns about increased spending, while many Democrats are expected to oppose the request without what they said are more detailed plans regarding military strategy and objectives.
