Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s exasperation with House Republicans has culminated in a flat-out rejection of Speaker Mike Johnson’s hard-fought deal to extend a key foreign surveillance authority.
Instead, the Senate is planning to jam the House with a 45-day extension of FISA Section 702 before leaving town Thursday for a weeklong recess.
FISA is one of multiple high-profile issues that have put Johnson and Thune at odds — and in Johnson’s case, crosswise with the White House.
Privacy hawks like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are grumbling at the short-term FISA patch. But Senate leaders are confident they’ll secure an agreement to send the measure to the House before leaving town — and just hours before the Section 702 authority is set to expire.
The House GOP leadership is considering moving the short-term FISA bill under suspension of the rules — needing a two-thirds majority — if the measure passes the Senate. Section 702 authority expires today.
Johnson fought to muscle through a FISA extension in the House on Wednesday. But the addition of a central bank digital currency ban to please conservative hardliners made it “dead on arrival,” in the Senate, Thune said.
DHS drama. Just before 11 p.m. on Wednesday, House Republicans adopted the Senate-passed budget resolution for the reconciliation bill funding ICE and Border Patrol. The 215-211 vote came after five hours of haggling between GOP leaders and Republican rank-and-file members over unrelated issues like E15 ethanol sales.
House Republicans then spent the rest of Wednesday night debating the farm bill and related amendments. They expect to vote on the legislation today. But GOP leaders have punted consideration of a bill mandating year-round sale of E15 until after recess.
“With a narrow majority, this is how every close vote is,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told us.
The House and Senate are only scheduled to be in session for two weeks in May, which means Republicans will need to move quickly on the final reconciliation bill to meet President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline.
Yet even more urgently for Johnson is the long-stalled Senate bill to fund the rest of DHS.
The White House has called on Johnson to pass it. But Johnson is still trying to placate rank-and-file Republicans, including House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who dislike language that “zeroes-out” ICE and Border Patrol funding.
Following the budget resolution vote, Scalise said GOP leaders still haven’t decided whether to try to tweak the Senate-passed DHS bill.
“We’re gonna work on that now,” Scalise said late Wednesday. “We had to get through this budget, so we’ll resolve to make that decision tomorrow morning.”
The White House has said it’ll run out of money to pay DHS employees starting Friday.
