Senate Budget panel Republicans defend plan to move on border, defense funding ahead of tax cuts

The Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday approved a GOP budget blueprint that sets instructions for forthcoming legislation featuring up to $345 billion in funding for border security, immigration enforcement and defense needs. 

After a full day of debate in which Republicans defeated 42 Democratic amendments, the budget resolution advanced on a 11-10, party-line vote. 

GOP senators on the budget panel defended their decision to proceed with a plan to tee up a border, defense and energy bill ahead of sweeping tax and spending cuts, as House Republicans released a competing budget blueprint that calls for combining everything into one massive bill. 

“The reason I want to start and I want to start now is because there’s a sense of urgency about the immigration plan of President Trump,” Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said, noting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is running out of money.

“To my colleagues in the House, I hope you can pass one, big beautiful bill,” he said. “But we’ve got to move on this issue.”

Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, said the Senate budget resolution is not intended to undermine his home-state colleague, House Speaker Mike Johnson, whom he has “complete confidence in,” but to keep the process moving. 

“I don’t care if we do one bill or two bills,” he said. “I can teach this round or flat. I just want to see us pass something.” 

The Senate Budget Committee considered 42 amendments to the budget resolution — all offered by Democrats and defeated by the GOP majority. The panel finished the mark up Wednesday evening, eliminating the need for a planned second day on Thursday. 

The most important part of the budget resolution is the reconciliation instructions it contains for the coming border, defense and energy bill Senate Republicans want to speed through Congress. 

The budget instructs the judiciary and Homeland Security committees in both chambers to provide $175 billion for border security and immigration enforcement measures and also tells the armed services committees to come up with $150 billion for defense. The transportation committees would also be able to contribute up to $20 billion for the Coast Guard to assist with border security and defense. 

Democrats questioned Republicans’ decision to use the partisan reconciliation process, which will allow them to skirt a potential filibuster in the Senate, to pass funding that could get bipartisan support. 

“You don’t need to use reconciliation to fund spending on defense. We do it all the time in a bipartisan way,” Sen. Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat, said, noting Congress has also cut bipartisan deals providing for border funding but Republicans have blocked them to seek stricter enforcement policies.

What the GOP budget effort is really about, Mr. Kaine argued, is dramatically cutting spending on programs that affect “everyday Americans.”

Many of the Democrats’ amendments focused on protecting those programs. 

The total of up to $345 billion in new border and defense spending would be spread over four years, with other committees instructed to provide offsets over that same period.

While Mr. Graham said his intention is for all of the new spending to be offset, his budget instructions set a much more flexible floor of $5 billion in deficit reduction across a handful of committees of jurisdiction.

One committee charged with contributing to the offsets is the Senate Finance Committee, which is the panel with jurisdiction over taxes and health care programs. Because the House Ways and Means Committee, the lower chamber’s tax writing committee, was not included in the instructions, that takes tax increases off the table and leaves cuts to health care programs like Medicaid, Democrats said.

“There’s going to be an effort to keep the Medicaid cuts hidden behind the curtain, but they’re going to come sooner or later,” said Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who also serves on the Budget panel.

Mr. Wyden’s amendment to remove the Finance Committee’s instruction was defeated.

Senate Finance Chairman Michael Crapo, Idaho Republican, said he has no intention of meeting his panel’s instruction to cut at least $1 billionby targeting Medicaid.

He said he is only eying repeal of a Biden administration nursing home regulation that “if implemented would increase taxpayer costs by billions and jeopardize patient access in rural areas to long-term care.”

Democrats also railed against expected offsets that seek to roll back former President Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs and climate initiatives. 

“This budget resolution sets up a bill that opens the door to making student loans more expensive,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the Budget Committee’s ranking Democrat.

It also tees up Republican plans to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s methane fee and “sets up a strategy for encouraging massive amounts of drilling for fossil fuels, which pours fuel on the fire for climate chaos,” he said.

Amendments to remove instructions to committees that could take those actions were defeated. 

Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, offered an amendment to remove the $150 billion instruction for boosting defense funding, saying if lawmakers want to fund priorities like a missile defense system and more warships they should be able to find room in the already “bloated” Pentagon budget. 

Mr. Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency advisor Elon Musk have said there are billions of waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon budget, he argued.  

“So it’s kind of hard for me to understand then, given that reality, why anybody here would want to give the Pentagon and defense contractors another $150 billion,” Mr. Sanders said. 

Republicans rejected the amendment. Mr. Graham said he agreed there’s waste to be found in the Pentagon budget but the priority needs to be boosting readiness as wars between U.S. allies and adversaries rage overseas. 

“We need more capability, we need it now,” Mr. Graham said.

Other defeated Democratic amendments sought to insert their priorities into the budget, like affordable housing and child care, and attempted to score political messaging points. For example, several amendments sought to place checks on Mr. Musk and DOGE.