Senate Republicans’ reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP is in peril.
The controversy over President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund has halted the roughly $70 billion package. Senate GOP leaders have said the White House needs to help them find a way out of the impasse.
The Republican leadership has asked the White House to develop language to impose guardrails on the fund. Payouts from the fund could benefit Trump’s allies and supporters, including those convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
But the White House isn’t playing ball quite yet on addressing GOP senators’ concerns, which were raised during a hostile closed-door meeting last week with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. That might not be surprising, given that Trump is defending the fund.
Yet absent cooperation from the White House, Senate GOP leaders may go alone, with proposals ranging from imposing eligibility requirements to nullifying the fund altogether. Getting 50 votes to begin the process on the Senate floor won’t be easy. The path forward after that could be even trickier.
This is all very risky, as it increases the likelihood of a direct clash between Trump and Senate Republicans at a time when goodwill between them is at a low point.
Gridlock. It’s difficult to imagine the Senate moving forward with the immigration enforcement funding package until the White House proposes restrictions on who is eligible for the payout program. But Senate Republicans see this problem as one of Trump’s own making, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune made clear last week that the administration needs to play a role.
Senate GOP leaders want to pass the reconciliation bill by the end of next week, but that’s shaping up to be a difficult task. Ideally, they want to address the “anti-weaponization” fund as part of the base text of the legislation before it hits the floor, rather than expose it to the “Wild West” of the vote-a-rama, in which Democrats could essentially control the process.
As we explained on Monday, a handful of GOP senators may vote for Democratic amendments regardless of how the fund is addressed in the base text.
Historically, Senate leaders have been hesitant to kick off the floor process on a reconciliation bill until they’re confident they’ll be able to defeat amendments from the minority party. But the “anti-weaponization” fund is so politically toxic that it may be impossible for GOP leaders to secure these assurances from rank-and-file Republican senators.
GOP congressional leaders already face a legislative logjam. Section 702 of FISA expires on June 12, and House Republican leadership doesn’t expect a bill on the floor next week.
Speaker Mike Johnson is holding meetings about a third reconciliation package, which could include hundreds of billions of dollars in defense funding. Congress needs to pass a highway bill. And government funding will run dry at the end of September.
Shockingly, the House only has 40 days in session between now and Election Day.
