Congress is back in town from their two-week Easter recess and Senate Republicans are trying to execute on a second reconciliation package as Congress continues to be consumed by a 58-day Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, resignations and potential Democratic-led war powers votes.
As Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) explained it on Monday night, leadership is hoping to keep the reconciliation package “very, very skinny — anorexic-like skinny.”
“To execute on it and do it with any kind of speed, you’ve got to keep it really tight,” Thune told reporters Monday night.
The plan is for the reconciliation package to include three-years of funding for only Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — without any offsets. That plan reportedly was approved by President Donald Trump last week.
On paper, that’s a smart move to bring the Republican caucuses — which hold members from a wide range of ideological backgrounds — together, in both the lower and upper chamber and pass the funding with a simple majority, as allowed by the reconciliation process. But the reality may not be that simple.
Republican lawmakers in both the Senate and House are already indicating they want more from the process than just ICE and CBP funding. Leadership is worried about the package becoming a GOP wish list.
Each addition to appease individuals would drag out the already-lengthy process, possibly even setting up its failure if the Republican Party cannot come to a consensus on what should be included in their own party-line package. President Trump already called on Republicans to pass their second reconciliation bill “no later than June 1st.”
“If he starts making deals with individual senators … then he’ll have an avalanche on his hands,” Kennedy said. “I know a number of senators who will take a run at Thune and say, ‘Look, you’ll only get my vote if you include my stuff in it.’ Well, if he starts that, then I’ve got some of my own stuff.”
Kennedy said if Thune is going to engage with a free-for-all, then he would like to see part of the SAVE America Act included in the reconciliation package.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said he wants to make sure the reconciliation package includes money for the military and other GOP priorities, per Politico.
Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said he wants to make sure Republicans offset any funding they include in the package. Scott, at least publicly, is not convinced by the argument that Republicans don’t need to offset the funding in the package because it only contains funding that is normally a part of the appropriations process.
“I can understand the argument but I think we ought to pay for everything,” Scott said. “We’re running $2 trillion deficits.”
Of course, the rules of reconciliation do not require them to offset the cost of any increased spending within the budget window, which is usually a 10 year period, but Scott is one of a handful of Republicans who likes to jump at any chance to talk about the need for cuts — usually to the social safety net — to chip away at the deficit.
But in the 2025 GOP reconciliation package, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, Scott voted to increase the deficit by more than $4 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) estimates.
Across the Capitol, some House Republicans are also pushing back on Senate GOP leadership’s vision for an “anorexic” reconciliation package.
“Well – he isn’t the only voice in this, is he?” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said on social media, referring to Thune’s remarks. “Isolating DHS was stupid. Isolating ICE/CBP is worse. We should move other priorities with ALL of DHS… we’re running out of time to deliver and to clean up these repeated swamp messes.”
Senate Republicans worked with Democrats last month to pass a bill and restore funding to all of DHS except ICE and CBP, but House Republican leadership refused to put the measure up for a vote in the House. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) later made a deal with Thune and agreed to join the Senate deal. But House leadership is still refusing to bring the bill that would reopen DHS to the floor until they make some progress in funding ICE and CBP through reconciliation.
I could have sworn there was a time where a reconciliation bill had to reduce the deficit. I thought there was also a restriction that reconciliation could only be used once per year, or maybe it was once per year outside the federal budget.
Did the Senate change the rules at some point or am I dreaming? Maybe those restrictions only apply when Democrats lead the Senate, like many other niceties of good governance.