Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is running into early resistance to passing elements of the SAVE America Act through reconciliation, a party-line budget process that will require near-unanimity among Republicans in both the House and the Senate.
On Monday evening, Trump backed off his demand that the voter ID legislation be passed alongside funding for the Department of Homeland Security, a tall order given near universal opposition from Democrats.
But the concession — that Republicans would embark on a monthslong process to pass a narrow version of the bill through reconciliation — has frustrated Republicans who believe the process would doom the legislation, or at a minimum is not a good use of the Senate’s time.
“I don’t think that’s a good approach,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Republicans appear to be closer than ever to ending a monthlong shutdown at DHS, handing Democrats a symbolic win by agreeing to exclude $5 billion earmarked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal operations.
Instead, that money would be lumped together with the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act provisions Republicans may pursue through reconciliation.
There are serious doubts that either priority can get through the Senate with just Republican votes, however, and conservatives don’t want to see deportations go unfunded.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the lead co-sponsor of the SAVE America Act, called it “essentially impossible” to pass the legislation, which requires voter ID at the polls and proof of citizenship when registering to vote, through reconciliation.
The process is narrowly targeted to legislation with budgetary effects, meaning Republicans would likely be limited to earmarking funds for ballot security or to incentivizing states to impose new voting restrictions.
In terms of ICE funding, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) called the idea of passing the additional $5 billion through reconciliation a “pipe dream.” In an interview on CNBC on Tuesday, he noted that Republicans only have a three-seat majority in the Senate and struggled to pass Trump’s tax law last year with those margins.
Their majority is even tighter in the House, and the conservative Freedom Caucus has similarly expressed skepticism about using reconciliation to pass elements of the SAVE America Act.
Thune, who is still taking the temperature of his conference, has not publicly committed to pursuing a party-line budget process and has previously been reluctant to go down that path because of the difficulty of keeping Republicans united.
Reconciliation is increasingly seen as a necessity, however, as Democrats signal they won’t cooperate on an array of GOP priorities, from Iran war funding to the SAVE America Act to ICE removal operations.
“I mean, I’ve said before, we’ll look at all the options on SAVE America,” Thune told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “And we’ve contemplated reconciliation for other things. We have a couple of vehicles available to us. And if we find that that’s a viable path that makes sense to get some things done that we want to get done, we’ll use it.”
Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), a GOP appropriator, called reconciliation part of a “multi-step” approach to getting ICE funded and argued that it will simply take time to build “consensus.”
“DHS is going to be funded,” Hoeven said. “We’re going to make sure of that they are now, and we’re going to make sure they continue to be.”
Republicans also note that ICE was funded as part of last year’s tax bill, which also passed through reconciliation.
Democrats could provide the votes to reopen DHS as soon as this week and welcomed the willingness to split off the deportation dollars. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has told colleagues that the concession is not enough to earn Democrats’ votes.
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Democrats want to codify the reforms they’ve been negotiating with the White House after federal immigration agents in Minneapolis killed two protesters, but Republicans appear ready to back away from many of those proposed changes as part of agreeing to the ICE carveout.
“If you’re not going to have funding, I don’t know how, all of a sudden, now you can demand reforms,” Thune said.