News: Trump administration officials told us Congress needs to pass the Senate’s Department of Homeland Security funding bill by the end of April.
This coming pay period, which ends Friday, is the last that the administration feels it can handle with its executive authority. Remember, President Donald Trump has been paying DHS employees by executive order.
Senate Republicans are expected to take the first step this week toward passage of a party-line reconciliation bill funding ICE and Border Patrol, a crucial part of their effort to convince House Republicans to end the more than two-month-long DHS shutdown.
The Senate Budget Committee is expected to release a budget resolution by Tuesday that instructs the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees to draw up plans to fund the agencies.
The instructions are likely to include high ceilings for funding, which would give Senate Republicans flexibility in writing the bill. But GOP senators expect the price tag to be in the $65 billion to $75 billion range.
The Senate could hold the first vote on the budget resolution as soon as Tuesday. That kicks off 50 hours of debate, equally divided between the two parties. With Republicans expected to yield back most of their time, the vote-a-rama that precedes final passage of the budget resolution could begin as soon as Wednesday night.
Bumpy road ahead. There are Republicans in both chambers who want to expand the reconciliation package beyond ICE and Border Patrol. These GOP lawmakers argue they’ll have few, if any, opportunities to address affordability and cost-of-living concerns before November.
“I just don’t want to see us miss the opportunity because I think this is the last train leaving the station,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, casting doubt on a third reconciliation bill.
Conservatives are pushing for Republicans to unite around one or two ideas that address cost of living issues. These senators could try to amend the budget resolution. There’s also still interest in offsets from some GOP spending hawks in both chambers.
Yet most Senate Republicans agree with GOP leaders that expanding the bill would make it too hard to pass.
“People want to do a lot more. They view reconciliation as a vehicle to do a lot of stuff,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. “But in this circumstance, it’s oriented around making sure we’re getting these agencies funded in the future.”
DHS shutdown. As reconciliation moves forward, there still seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding among Hill Republicans and the White House about DHS funding at-large.
When Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson announced their “two-track” plan to fund DHS, they said this would be done “in the coming days.”
That was almost three weeks ago, however. Johnson hasn’t made a move to pass the Senate’s bipartisan DHS funding bill yet — which includes everything but ICE and Border Patrol — due to an uproar from the House GOP rank-and-file.
Senate Republican leaders see Johnson as going back on his word and, in the process, disarming the GOP in the political messaging fight. Senate Republicans have also wanted Trump to get involved.
Johnson’s team rejects the suggestion that they’ve gone back on their word. They say that they plan to condition the passage of DHS funding on what the Senate does on reconciliation. But you should expect more pressure on the House in the coming days.
