Senate Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a budget resolution intended to provide funding for immigration enforcement agencies, marking the first formal step in a multi-part effort to end a prolonged partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats have repeatedly said they will not support funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) without significant reforms after the deaths of two U.S. citizens involving federal agents earlier this year. Republicans aim to use the budget tool known as reconciliation to approve funding for the rest of DHS along party lines, bypassing the need for Democratic votes.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced the resolution. It would empower the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees to draft legislation that could raise the deficit by as much as $70 billion each; a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the final total is expected to be $70 billion overall. That sum is projected to fund the agencies for roughly 3.5 years. President Trump has set a June 1 deadline for passage.
Reconciliation allows Congress to circumvent the Senate filibuster and pass certain budget-related measures with a simple majority. Most Senate business normally requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; Republicans hold 53 seats. The procedure was created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to ease changes to laws affecting revenue or spending, and it has been used repeatedly in polarized legislative periods — for example, the 2017 Republican tax cuts and Democratic packages for COVID-19 relief and the Inflation Reduction Act.
How reconciliation works
Reconciliation proceeds in two main steps:
– The Senate and House adopt a budget resolution that issues instructions to specific committees to produce legislation aimed at particular budgetary outcomes, such as reducing or increasing the deficit by a set amount.
– The designated committees draft bills that meet those instructions. The Budget Committees then assemble those committee bills into a single package for consideration in both chambers; if the House and Senate produce different versions, they must reconcile them.
Vote-a-ramas
A distinctive feature of Senate reconciliation is the vote-a-rama: extended sessions during which senators offer amendments in rapid succession before a final vote. Vote-a-ramas give the minority party chances to force votes on amendments or raise budget points of order. Typically there are two such rounds in a reconciliation effort: a more procedural one on the budget resolution and a more consequential one on the final package.
Limits on reconciliation
Reconciliation can be used only for provisions that directly affect spending, revenues, or the debt limit — not for ordinary discretionary spending items. The Byrd Rule, named for former Sen. Robert Byrd, permits the Senate to remove any provision deemed not to have a direct budgetary effect. Senators may raise points of order against suspect provisions, and the Senate parliamentarian advises on whether those provisions violate the Byrd Rule. Other restrictions include prohibitions on changing Social Security and rules against shifting costs outside the budget window, typically 10 years.
This story is adapted from an earlier report.