The GOP’s plan to fund immigration enforcement agencies through a strictly partisan process has prompted two distinct warnings from Democrats.
First, they say it’s simply a bad idea to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement without reining in the agency — and without anything to address the rising cost of living. Second, Democrats are warning Republicans that what goes around comes around.
Republicans aim to take a big step forward this week on a plan to fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection by adopting a budget resolution that would allow them to bypass a Senate filibuster and pass immigration enforcement funding through reconciliation. Republicans aim to adopt their budget resolution as soon as Thursday, setting up final passage of a reconciliation bill by President Donald Trump’s deadline of June 1.
But Democrats have warned that the plan would set in stone a precedent for partisan government-funding bills — measures that traditionally require 60 votes in the Senate.
“They’re setting a precedent for the future, and it is going to be extremely difficult in the future for whoever ends up in the minority,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told reporters Wednesday.
Other Democrats are even more direct, explicitly saying they should follow suit when their party controls the House, Senate and White House.
“Why would we sit at the table and do our negotiations with Republicans, if the rules, if the norm, now allows us to use reconciliation for appropriations — and multi-year appropriations, right? Republicans are inviting us to just do multi-year appropriations through reconciliation,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told MS NOW.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., agreed that Democrats can’t turn down the opportunity to mirror the GOP’s use of reconciliation to fund agencies.
“Democrats should not play by a different set of rules from Republicans when it comes to reconciliation,” Van Hollen told MS NOW. “And so, yes, they’re creating a precedent that Democrats can and should and will use.”
Republicans have released a budget resolution that would allow up to $140 billion in spending over 10 years — $70 billion each for the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Judiciary Committee. That would allow Republicans to pass an ICE and CBP funding bill with a simple majority in the Senate. They’ve outlined plans for a $70 billion measure to keep the agencies running through the rest of Trump’s term.
For decades, lawmakers considered agency budgets out-of-bounds for the reconciliation process. Instead, tax measures and some one-off “mandatory” pots of money were enacted through the fast-tracked process. Democrats cracked the door open under President Joe Biden by funding part of the IRS budget through reconciliation, and Republicans last year pushed through hundreds of billions of dollars for DHS and the military.
Now, a second round of reconciliation — specifically to get around stalled bipartisan talks on ICE funding — may solidify the partisan trend for agency funding.
Of course, Republicans are aware of the risk that Democrats will similarly fund agencies with partisan bills.
“It’s hard to say that we’re going to do this just once and then it’s done, because we never do,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., an appropriator and the No. 4 Senate Republican, told MS NOW. “It’s one, and then it’s precedent — and then it’s off to the races.”
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Rep. Robert Adertholt, R-Ala., blamed the Senate for the funding dysfunction. He said House Republicans feel they have no choice but to bypass the filibuster to end the DHS shutdown.
“I understand about the filibuster. I understand it. But that is not actually in the Constitution, as I understand it,” Aderholt told MS NOW, noting that the filibuster is a matter of Senate rules. “So I really have been very disappointed in the Senate the way they handle this. I don’t really blame the speaker. I think he’s been put in a difficult position, but the Senate should have found a way to work through this.”
Democrats are also conflicted about the issue. Some say they would oppose a plan to fund agencies through reconciliation. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a senior appropriator and the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he wants Democrats to “do our utmost in terms of regular order.”
And Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said she’s opposed to using reconciliation to fund agency budgets — even if Democrats take power.
“That is skirting the process, and we have to try to — we need to — shut that avenue down,” DeLauro told MS NOW. “It’s circumventing the appropriations process.”
But other Democrats say they can’t rule out a long-term change in the partisanship of funding talks. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said he isn’t sure if Democrats “can put the genie back in the bottle or not,” but he wants Congress to return to regular order.
And Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, a centrist Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Republicans are setting a “dangerous precedent all around” by circumventing the filibuster to fund an agency budget.
When asked if he’d support a reconciliation bill to fund agencies favored by Democrats, Case said he didn’t know.
“I’ll have to face that when I get there,” he said.
Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from Arizona State University.