It was just a few short months ago that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters to expect a major focus on health care from his fellow congressional Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. And yet, health care could not be further from lawmakers’ minds as the GOP struggles to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, let alone do much of anything else before November. The clock is ticking but, incredibly, with little time left for legislating, Republicans have yet to even agree what’s on their agenda, let alone the steps to carry it out.
The biggest headache for Johnson and Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has been the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which has stretched over 65 days. There are two big disagreements among GOP lawmakers about how to proceed. One dispute has split Republicans between the Capitol’s chambers, with the House on one side and the Senate on the other. The latter has been more of a battle royal, playing out among, and between, the two GOP caucuses.
The clock is ticking but, incredibly, with little time left for legislating, Republicans have yet to even agree what’s on their agenda.
After several fits and starts, Johnson begrudgingly agreed earlier this month to a two-step plan from the Senate to end the stalemate. A full-year appropriations bill would fund all of DHS except Immigrations and Custom Enforcement and Border Patrol, the targets of Democrats’ demand for reforms. Republicans would then use the budget reconciliation process to separately fund the immigration enforcement agencies, skipping the filibuster and preventing Democrats from gumming up the works.
But the GOP has no problem getting in its own way without any help from Democrats. Enough House Republicans have opposed voting on any bill, which excludes ICE, that Johnson has not even tried to bring it to the floor since returning from recess last week.
The Senate is not usually the more impatient of the two chambers, and the body is only growing more frustrated at the House’s delays. Senators are gearing up to pass a budget framework this week, the first step in the reconciliation process. The House, meanwhile, would then need to pass the exact same framework as the Senate, potentially slowing things down further if there’s no inter-caucus agreement in place.
And that’s before getting into the free-for-all over what’s going to be included in the reconciliation package.
Right now, we can split legislators into roughly two camps that transcend the House and Senate divide: maximalists and minimalists. The minimalists, including Thune, just want to see this fight over and done with, and any deviation from that script makes it harder to get the budget bill over the line. The maximalists, on the other hand, are pretty sure this reconciliation bill is the GOP’s last chance to get major legislation passed before November. From their point of view, it would be a waste to not pack this bill with any GOP priorities that did not manage to get stuffed into last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Thune’s vision for the budget bill is narrowly focused on providing $75 billion in funding to ICE and Border Patrol over three years, keeping future appropriations debates free of the current squabbling. Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., managed to get President Donald Trump to sign off on this zoomed-in scope, removing one potential roadblock to getting the reconciliation bill done. But Trump’s endorsement of a speedy resolution, as well as the related June 1 deadline to fund ICE and Border Patrol, has done little though to tamp down on the internal bickering among lawmakers.
The maximalists are not united amongst themselves over what an expanded reconciliation bill would include.
Some think the bill should include parts of the SAVE America Act, an election bill that has stalled out in the Senate. There could be requests for additional assistance for struggling farmers or additional funding for the Iran war potentially added to the mix. And then there’s a wild card in the form of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and other fiscal hawks who think any spending in the reconciliation bill should be fully paid for with cuts elsewhere in the budget.
It’s an admittedly thorny problem that Thune and Johnson face, one with good arguments on both sides.
Senators will at least get the opportunity to try to stuff additional items into the package during the “vote-a-rama” marathon of amendments that accompanies the reconciliation process.
“I think that’s where the default position is, ‘Then put it in an amendment, and we’ll see if it can pass,’” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., a member of Senate Republican leadership, told reporters last week. The result though will still need to get past the House, where a two-vote margin means that almost any dissent could derail the whole process.
It’s an admittedly thorny problem that Thune and Johnson face, one with good arguments on both sides. The minimalists are right that a narrow bill has a better chance of making its way to Trump’s desk. And the maximalists are correct that there’s probably not going to be enough time or willpower among the battered GOP to pass a third reconciliation bill this congress. This is likely going to be the last major legislation that has a clear shot of not facing a Democratic filibuster, so the stakes are high.
It’s clear that Thune is hoping to harness enough momentum with a narrower bill to force Johnson’s caucus to accept it. But banking on House Republicans to back down when they feel this backed into a corner is a tough bet. The truth is that any solution that gets enough votes to pass both the House and Senate can’t please everybody — and nobody wants to be the one left disappointed.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.