Washington Examiner investigations editor Sarah Bedford said there is a lack of trust among Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate over how to end the partial government shutdown.
Democrats have accused House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) of having “caved” to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in the fight to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Johnson is scrapping a 60-day stopgap bill that included more funding for immigration agencies and instead is attempting to pass a bipartisan Senate deal that excludes immigration funding.
Bedford said the Senate passed a bill that funded almost all of DHS, excluding funding for immigration enforcement operations, through the end of the fiscal year. She emphasized that this is “controversial” for Democrats since they want to see “a bunch of reforms” to immigration enforcement.
“But House leadership under Johnson said, ‘We don’t really trust you guys, our Senate colleagues, to follow through on any sort of two-track process that would fund the controversial parts of DHS,’ and so Johnson had said, ‘We’re not going to pass the Senate version of the bill because we want to fund all of DHS at once,’” Bedford said on the Hugh Hewitt Show Wednesday. “And the House wanted to do that with a very short [continuing resolution] that would just be eight weeks of funding for all of DHS to give time to negotiate something longer for them.”
Bedford added that President Donald Trump had been “sitting in the background,” letting Johnson and Thune feud over the right process for funding DHS before weighing in and backing the reconciliation process. She said Trump’s “full backing” of this “finally broke the log jam,” and Republican lawmakers will take the two-track process before using reconciliation to overcome the 60-vote filibuster to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
Bedford noted Republicans have “one shot” to use reconciliation every year, and Trump has previously indicated that he wants to see “what usable elements of the SAVE Act” could be used in this process. She added that she “can’t imagine” Republicans not trying to “pack” as much in this bill once they are unified on the idea of using reconciliation.
Thune is facing pressure to end a two-week vacation period for lawmakers as the weekslong DHS shutdown continues. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump is “encouraging” lawmakers to “come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem.”
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Bedford said Johnson will have to “make good” on his promise to bring lawmakers back to fund DHS, noting how TMZ is exposing lawmakers for vacationing amid the shutdown.
Trump is asking Congress to pass the reconciliation bill that would fund ICE and CBP within the next two months, setting a June 1 deadline.