Breaking overnight: After a six-hour vote-a-rama, the Senate adopted a budget resolution early Thursday morning allowing Republicans to use the party-line reconciliation process to fund ICE and Border Patrol for the next three-plus years.
The final vote was 50-48, with GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Ky.) joining all Democrats in opposing the measure. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) didn’t vote as both are out for personal reasons.
The GOP measure now heads to the House, where its future is far from certain amid an intense Republican push to expand the bill’s scope beyond immigration enforcement.
This is news. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told us he doesn’t have assurances from Speaker Mike Johnson that the House will take up the resolution in its current form. But Thune argued that Senate Republicans’ action Thursday morning should push House GOP leaders to finally take up the broader DHS funding bill.
“It didn’t seem like this should be that heavy a left,” Thune lamented. “But nothing is easy these days.”
Thune has been reluctant to directly criticize Johnson and House GOP leaders. But Thune expressed frustration with Johnson’s posture toward DHS funding, most notably the speaker’s refusal to quickly pass the DHS funding bill even as the White House warns the department is running out of money.
“That seemed like a plan that would be pretty easy to execute, but obviously proved not to be in the House,” Thune said. “We sent it over there twice, and the last time with the understanding — the White House, everybody — that they were going to move it.”
House GOP leaders have said they won’t reopen DHS until the reconciliation bill is nearing final passage. Thune said he wants the White House to get more engaged in ensuring the House passes the budget resolution and DHS funding bill.
More from Thune:
“I guess I don’t understand — it was all laid out … and this reconciliation bill is now coming. I would think that would’ve resolved or hopefully answered all the questions their members had over there. But it hasn’t turned out that way quite yet.”
Vote-a-rama. Vulnerable GOP senators voted for several Democratic amendments, most of which focused on cost-of-living issues.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) backed amendments designed to lower the cost of health care, groceries and electricity; prevent insurance companies from denying coverage; and increase funding for school meal programs.
Collins also voted for amendments calling for boosted child care funding and measures to address price hikes associated with tariffs and the Iran war.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told us this shows that Collins and Sullivan are “very nervous and they’re very worried.”
The House. Johnson now has a tricky situation on his hands. Do he and House GOP leaders put the Senate-approved budget resolution on the floor, or listen to the increasingly loud voices in his conference who want to expand the reconciliation bill?
Key House Republicans — most importantly Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) — have been advocating for the latter.
Smith previously told us the bill needs sweeteners, warning ICE and Border Patrol funding alone isn’t popular with Americans. Arrington will back whatever the House GOP leadership ultimately decides, but he has made the case for Republicans to go bigger on reconciliation.
This flies directly in the face of what the White House has been advocating for — a narrow bill that only funds ICE and Border Patrol. The DHS shutdown is now in its 68th day, and Trump administration officials want the crisis to finally be resolved.
Yet House Republicans have been increasingly ignoring Trump. They rejected his 18-month FISA extension, too. Thune has filed cloture on a three-year FISA Section 702 extension with the program scheduled to expire next week.
There are a lot of good strategic reasons for keeping reconciliation 2.0 narrow. Additional provisions would complicate passage and open up new committee jurisdictions that Democrats could exploit. There’d also be calls for spending cuts from fiscal hawks. This could set off alarm bells for GOP moderates.
New York GOP Rep. Andrew Garbarino, the House Homeland Security chair, has warned privately about the political peril of enacting spending cuts. Garbarino cautioned it would look like Republicans are making cuts in order to fund ICE — even if that’s not what they’re trying to do.
Because of these cross-currents, it’s not entirely clear to many in the House Republican leadership whether Johnson will put the budget resolution on the floor next week.
