House Republicans are divided over whether to accept a narrow Senate reconciliation bill to fund border enforcement or risk derailing it in pursuit of broader legislation.
The Senate on Tuesday moved forward with a plan to provide up to $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, using a party-line process known as reconciliation that bypasses the 60-vote filibuster threshold. House Republicans are now trying to decide if they will follow in lockstep.
“Now we’re in a position where we’re having to look at this whole reconciliation thing and whether it’s going to be a skinny reconciliation, which is really frustrating to a lot of my colleagues and myself as well, very frustrating, because this is a tool that we as a majority should be able to utilize,” Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) told the Washington Examiner.
“To burn, if you will, reconciliation on simply funding all of Department of Homeland Security, which is crazy to me, but obviously we’re going to have to do it,” Harris said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has signaled he is willing to accept the narrower approach, even as he blamed Democrats for the DHS funding shortfall.
“Through a targeted and narrow reconciliation process, we will fully fund the agency, including ICE and CPP for three years in the future,” Johnson said at a Tuesday press conference.
Still, some Republicans are reluctant to give up leverage for a more expansive package — particularly as hopes for a third reconciliation bill fade amid slim margins and the approaching November elections.
“Ideally, we’d love to have three reconciliation packages,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told the Washington Examiner. “We’d love to take care of everything. The question is, can we actually fund DHS in the short term, before we run out of money?
“We’re trying to weigh the difference between ideal and pragmatic,” McCormick said. “And I think what we’ve come to the conclusion is we still have a lot of work to do to bring in all parts of our party.”
Others worry that accepting a scaled-down bill now could mean forfeiting any chance at a larger legislative win later.
“It comes back down to the Senate,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) told the Washington Examiner. “I mean, can we trust the Senate to do a round three on reconciliation? If we did the skinny one, will they come back? So I think we need to have some sort of a hook to get a third one to get through the Senate as well.”
Stutzman said the hook for the third bill could come from a supplemental military request for the war in Iran.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), meanwhile, said Republicans should seize the moment to go bigger if possible.
“I think every Republican recognizes we have to fund the Department of Homeland Security,” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner. “We’ve got a conflict in Iran. We’ve got deportations that we ran on, and we need to fund it properly. What I’d love to see is the Senate get around the filibuster to pass it the way it should be passed, but short of that, reconciliation is the way to do it.”
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Gill went on to emphasize Republicans should “take the opportunity” to address troubles such as election integrity and tax policy rather than passing up “good opportunities for big legislation.”
“I mean, I would love to do reconciliation 3.0,” Gill said. “Candidly, I’m skeptical that that’s going to materialize.”