Senate Republicans need to pull off an incredibly tricky attempt to pass a reconciliation bill in the coming weeks so they can finally end the 55-day Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
Their sprint to unite around a party-line package funding ICE and CBP begins today. Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso are going to the White House to plot out the reconciliation bill.
The stakes. President Donald Trump has gone hot and cold on the Senate’s plans to end the DHS shutdown. It’s going to be crucial that Republican leaders make sure the president sticks with the latest plan, which is to fund ICE and CBP for at least three years in a party-line reconciliation bill. Trump’s help would go a long way to getting the bill done and keeping it from ballooning into something too sprawling to pass. Currently, DHS employees are getting paid thanks to a Trump executive order.
House Republicans across the conference are revolting against the idea of breaking off ICE and CBP funding and passing the rest of the DHS spending bill on a bipartisan basis. The House Freedom Caucus wants to shove all funding for DHS into reconciliation. That would be an even bigger blow to appropriators and harder to pull off for the GOP.
Fiscal hawks could also try to force offsets for the new spending, which may make the effort too politically toxic for GOP moderates. Republican leaders’ argument that annual appropriations are not paid for could be convincing enough.
Another crucial choice that the White House and GOP congressional leaders have to make is how much money to give ICE and CBP. Graham has said he’s considering three to 10 years of funding for the agencies. Those figures could look vastly different and could change the calculus for conservatives on whether they demand offsets.
What comes next. The Senate will return to Washington on Monday night, giving GOP leaders a chance to socialize and lock in reconciliation plans.
Leaders of the reconciliation effort will want to move extremely fast. Trump set a June 1 deadline for getting the bill to his desk. The Senate Republican leadership is aiming to put a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions on the floor by the end of April.
The reconciliation process involves numerous procedural steps, including adopting the budget resolution, vote-a-ramas and the “Byrd Bath.” So Trump’s deadline is already bearing down. Remember that Senate committees can hold markups during the reconciliation process, but they’ve often skipped that step in recent years.
