Senate Republicans voted to begin debate on their initial budget resolution to fund Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the next three and a half years, kick-starting the process of unilaterally funding federal immigration agencies without Democratic support.
The Senate narrowly voted along party lines to advance the budget resolution, beginning a period of debate that could tee the legislation up for a vote as soon as Wednesday or Thursday.
The Senate Budget Committee released the budget blueprint on Tuesday after weeks of negotiations, setting the stage for the upper chamber to take its first vote. Once the resolution goes through the Senate, it will be sent to the House for consideration — after that, the designated committees will get to work to draft the underlying bill.
“Republicans are doing something that must be done quickly, and that our Democrat colleagues are trying to prevent us from doing. That something is simple: fully fund Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great threat to the United States,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. “This resolution will instruct the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees to create a reconciliation bill that fully funds Border Patrol and ICE for 3.5 years, which will carry us through the Trump presidency.”
The budget resolution is part of a two-track process making its way through Congress to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down for more than two months due to Democratic opposition. The reconciliation package will solely fund CBP and ICE while lawmakers will also work toward passing a separate funding bill to fund the rest of the department through the end of September.
The second funding bill has already passed the Senate, but conservatives in the House refused to approve it until a reconciliation package funding immigration enforcement was also approved.
“You can’t isolate and have orphan agencies of the department. You’ve got to fund it all,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on Tuesday. “There’s some concern on our side that if you do the bulk of the department first before (reconciliation), then they could be left out. We can’t allow for that. So working through that the sequencing is important and the language of the legislation is important.”
The budget resolution includes instructions for both the House and Senate, and sets a ceiling of $140 billion evenly split between the Judiciary and the Homeland Security committees.
The Senate could vote on the resolution as early as Wednesday, although that timing could slip to Thursday if Democrats use up all of their debate time to delay passage. The reconciliation package will be subject to a marathon voting session known as a vote-a-rama, during which Democrats can introduce an unlimited number of amendments so long as they are related to the committee’s jurisdictions.
Democrats are expected to introduce several amendments in an effort to force Republicans to vote on uncomfortable issues ahead of the midterms.
The budget blueprint instructs committees to have their portions finished and submitted to the Budget Committee by May 15, two weeks ahead of President Donald Trump’s deadline of June 1.