Senate Republicans begin debate on budget plan for $70 billion boost to immigration enforcement

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to begin debate on a budget blueprint that will allow them to craft a filibuster-proof bill to spend another $70 billion on immigration enforcement through the remainder of President Trump’s term.

The 52-46 procedural vote kicked off up to 50 hours of debate on the budget resolution, followed by a “vote-a-rama” of unlimited amendments before a vote on final adoption of the blueprint.

The House will also need to approve the budget to unlock the filibuster-proof reconciliation process Republicans are using to override Democrats’ blockade of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection funding in the annual appropriations process.

Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming said the reconciliation play is necessary because of Democrats’ “historic obstruction.”

“They want to defund ICE. They want to defund Border Patrol,” he said. “They want to go back to the days where 10 million illegal immigrants flooded into our country — criminals, drug dealers, gang members, all of it.”

The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for over two months as Democrats filibustered the annual funding bill, demanding changes to immigration enforcement policies after federal agents killed two Americans in Minneapolis in January.

Senate Democrats said the budget resolution highlights Republicans’ misplaced priorities, and they will use their unlimited amendments to tee up votes on cost-of-living issues.

“Republicans will have to decide: Lower costs or let them keep rising? Help families or block relief? Take action or stand by while Americans struggle? Stand with the American people or with Trump’s unchecked enforcement machine?” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

Some Senate Republicans have pushed to use the budget reconciliation process to address economic concerns ahead of the midterm elections, and a few may offer amendments to that effect.

Sen. Ted Cruz has floated indexing capital gains to inflation to help lower the tax burden on long-term assets as one way to address cost-of-living issues. He said it would provide more favorable terms for homeowners to sell and increase housing stock for buyers.

The Texas Republican has not decided whether he will offer any amendments to the budget resolution but is urging colleagues to consider that idea, as well as proposals to ensure federal employees continue to get paid if Democrats shut down the government again this fall.

“This train is leaving the station, and we ought to be accomplishing as many substantive victories for the American people as possible,” he said.

GOP leaders have sought to tamp down the push for additions and keep the effort focused on funding ICE and CBP through the remainder of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

“We think the narrower, the tighter we keep the conversation around this, the more likely it is that we have success in passing it in the House and in the Senate and putting it on the president’s desk,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican.

The budget resolution instructs the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees in both chambers to craft legislation providing the immigration enforcement funding by May 15.

Each panel was given instructions that would let them add up to $70 billion to the deficit.

That technically allows for up to $140 billion to be spent across both committees, but a Budget Committee aide said the target is a collective $70 billion and that the instructions were written to preserve flexibility, given the committees’ overlapping jurisdictions.

Republicans last summer used the reconciliation process to provide more than $150 billion for immigration enforcement and border security — money the Trump administration has been using throughout the DHS shutdown to keep ICE and CBP operating.

The administration also recently tapped that pot of funding to pay other DHS workers who had not been compensated because of the shutdown.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said providing more money will ensure that “rational immigration policies that secure our border” continue.

“We are not going to undo the significant progress made under the leadership of President Trump and Republicans in Congress,” the South Carolina Republican said. “We are going to improve upon it.”

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, called the GOP effort to fund immigration enforcement agencies through reconciliation an end-run around the bipartisan appropriations process.

He also said a second reconciliation infusion is unnecessary given that most of the money Republicans approved last year remains available, including $63 billion of the $75 billion appropriated for ICE and $40 billion of the $65 billion provided to CBP.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, said the extra $70 billion Republicans want to spend on immigration enforcement could be better spent.

“That could pay for 200,000 local police officers for three years,” or a two-year extension of Obamacare premium subsidies or “one year of hearing, vision and dental are all paid for, for every single senior on Medicare,” she said.