After weeks of halting talks, a new proposal is materializing on Capitol Hill that aims to fund critical parts of the Department of Homeland Security as travelers across the country deal with long lines and missed flights at airports experiencing TSA officer shortages.
But despite optimism from top Senate Republicans, President Trump and Senate Democrats have yet to embrace the emerging framework.
For more than a month, Republicans demanded an agreement to fund DHS in its entirety. Funding for the department lapsed in mid-February amid anger over the agency’s handling of immigration enforcement. GOP leadership previewed a plan Tuesday to fund the majority of the department, minus Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s enforcement and removal operations division.
But most Democrats say they are unwilling to approve any additional funding for ICE without significant reforms to reign in the tactics of immigration officers after two U.S. citizens were killed in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Trump is also not sold on any deal that does not include an unrelated overhaul of federal elections known as the SAVE America Act.
“I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it,” Trump said Tuesday.
That’s as the DHS shutdown has now lasted 40 days, and federal employees who handle airport security, disaster response and cybersecurity go without pay.
“We are really concerned about our security posture and what the long term impacts of this shutdown is going to have on the workforce and our ability to carry out this mission,” Ha Nguyen McNeil, the TSA acting administrator, said during a House hearing on Wednesday.
“We need reforms”
Lawmakers have not released the full details of their plan, but top Senate Republicans say the proposed deal does include changes to ICE operations that Democrats negotiated earlier this year, like funding for officer-worn body cameras and reduced detention-center bed capacity.
These concessions were included in the House-passed DHS funding bill that stalled in the Senate after the two deadly shootings in Minneapolis.
But Democrats say the latest framework does not include other demands, like requiring judicial warrants for immigration agents to enter homes and businesses and a ban on face coverings for agents.
“We need reforms,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday. “We’ll be sending them an offer back. And I can assure you, it will contain significant reforms in it.”
Senate Democrats, including several of those who voted with Republicans to end the record-long government shutdown last fall, say they do not want to give ICE any funding until the White House agrees to more sweeping changes to how officers operate.
“Set aside ICE, fund everything else,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters on Tuesday. “Republicans should take yes for an answer on all the other agencies. Quit torturing people with long TSA lines and let’s go ahead and do this.”
Kaine noted that unlike other DHS employees, ICE officers are being paid despite the shutdown because ICE has access to the $75 billion in separate funds from Congress last summer as part of Republicans’ massive tax and spending bill.
Some conservative Republicans are also hesitant about a path forward that does not include the voting overhaul Trump has demanded.
The gambit involves a plan to fund ICE separately and pass parts of the SAVE America Act, an elections overhaul bill, without any Democratic support through a budget process called reconciliation. But success is not guaranteed.
Reconciliation 2.0
Senate Republicans successfully used reconciliation last year to pass major priorities of the Trump administration.
The recent push for a second reconciliation effort to tackle ICE funding and parts of the elections overhaul bill came out of a Monday evening meeting between Trump and a group of GOP senators, just a day after Trump rejected a similar offer.
“Maybe you can just say my colleagues were more persuasive than I was,” Thune said, just a few minutes before Trump declined to publicly endorse the agreement.
The SAVE America Act does not have the Democratic votes needed to pass in the Senate.
The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, like a valid U.S. passport or birth certificate plus photo ID. It would also require voters to present photo ID to cast a ballot.
Trump, who has continued to amplify false claims about election fraud, has called the SAVE America Act the “most important and consequential legislation” in the history of Congress. He’s previously vowed not to sign other bills passed by Congress until this bill is signed.
Democrats say it would disenfranchise eligible voters. Roughly half of Americans don’t have a passport. A similar bill has passed the House. But legislation in the Senate failed to attract 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, where a handful of Republicans are also opposed.
Combining parts of the election bill together with the remainder of ICE funding in a single reconciliation package will be an onerous and complicated process.
Reconciliation provisions need to have a budgetary impact to be accepted under Senate rules. The Senate parliamentarian’s rulings are usually the final word on reconciliation.
“The parliamentarian has a role to play in that process, and in the past, we have respected it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday. “And I would expect we would do that.”
But some GOP senators are skeptical the elections bill would pass muster.
“It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation,” posted Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Tuesday. Lee is a major supporter of the elections bill. “And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible.'”
But Wednesday morning, Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham said the Budget Committee is moving forward with creating a budget reconciliation bill.
“The purpose of the second reconciliation bill is to make sure there is adequate funding to secure our homeland and to support our men and women in the military who are fighting so bravely,” the South Carolina Republican posted. “President Trump and Leader Thune are right to push for a second reconciliation bill to address the threats we face and keep our elections secure and fair.”
CPR’s Caitlyn Kim contributed to this report.
