In the wee hours of Thursday morning, the Senate adopted a budget framework to provide funds for immigration enforcement that Democrats have denied since February.
But getting that framework through the House in order to ultimately send a bill to the president’s desk may be a challenge.
Senate Republicans are pursuing a two-track approach—a party-line “reconciliation” bill to fund immigration enforcement, and a bipartisan appropriations bill to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Senate has already sent the House a bill which would fund all of DHS except for immigration enforcement. The House has yet to take action on it, as conservatives have demanded progress on reconciliation first.
The reconciliation process allows for Congress to enact major budgetary changes with a simple majority in the Senate.
The Senate voted 50-48 to adopt a budget resolution—a nonbinding blueprint for a party-line budget reconciliation bill. Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined all present Democrats in opposition.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the budget committee, has spearheaded the plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
The law which governs reconciliation sets up a “vote-a-rama” before the final vote on any budget resolution, in which senators can propose as many amendments as they want.
The Senate followed the urging of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to keep the resolution “skinny,” voting down every amendment that was proposed, except for one from Graham to fund DHS’s efforts to apprehend illegal immigrants convicted of violence against minors.
The amendments were mostly Democrat-backed and aimed at forcing Republicans to vote down measures to boost entitlement spending.
However, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., proposed an amendment to the goals of the SAVE America Act—a bill which would require photo identification and proof of citizenship in federal elections.
It failed as Republican Sens. Murkowski, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined Democrats in opposition.
Now, to open the path for reconciliation, the House will have to approve the resolution.
Although the resolution does not have the force of law, the House rank-and-file will hold leverage in this situation, as leadership must get a resolution passed to move to reconciliation. The House has flouted leadership on recent critical votes.
Uniting the House Republican conference may be difficult, given that members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, distrustful of splitting up DHS funding, have called for a reconciliation bill to fund the whole agency, not just ICE and CBP.
Thune told reporters after the resolution’s passage that he hoped the White House and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., could get House members to unite around passing the resolution as is.
“They know it’s coming, and you know [Speaker Johnson’s] obviously got people who want to expand the scope too. But I think, hopefully, the White House will be engaged in trying to make sure we get the budget resolution done,” Thune said.
“It doesn’t seem like this should be that heavy of a lift, but nothing is easy these days,” he added.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal Thursday morning that he believes the House might oppose the piecemeal funding of DHS.
“I think it will have a hard time passing the House,” Cloud said. “Isolating part of appropriations … it’s just the wrong way to run Congress.”
Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., is a member of the House Appropriations Committee.
He told The Daily Signal he would prefer to keep the reconciliation bill skinny out of respect for appropriators’ authority.
“As an appropriator that’s a preferred way,” he said, adding that the House is choosing to “trust but verify” and proceed with reconciliation before appropriations.
“I don’t want to expand it,” he said.
