‘Bad idea’: Party-line plan for ICE funding has some fearing a slippery slope

If last year’s Republican megabill served as Congress’ gateway drug to party-line government funding, the GOP’s latest spending plan makes clear it was habit-forming.

Nine months ago, Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to skirt a Democratic filibuster and enact more than $280 billion for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. It shattered conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill that reconciliation’s special power couldn’t — and shouldn’t — be used to circumvent the across-the-aisle work Congress does each year to fund federal agencies.

Now President Donald Trump has given congressional Republicans until June 1 to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an entire government agency — through a partisan process that won’t require a single Democratic vote. Republicans are also mulling whether to fund a war in the Middle East that same way, with the White House considering a $200 billion request for supplemental funding for the Pentagon.

Republicans say this is happening because Democrats refuse to back a full Department of Homeland Security funding measure without adding guardrails on immigration enforcement activities the GOP finds intolerable, leading to the current record-breaking shutdown. Democrats also are unlikely to support giving the Trump administration additional dollars to bolster its military presence in Iran.

“Democrats have put us where we are, and we have to deal with it,” Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, a senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Monday. “We don’t have a choice.”

But Hoeven also acknowledged it could be a slippery slope. Asked whether he was worried about setting a new precedent, he conceded, “Me, as an appropriator? Yeah.”

Democrats previously used their own party-line bills during the Biden administration to fund programs opposed by Republicans, such as an $80 billion infusion for IRS tax enforcement. But that was in addition to the funding agencies received through regular appropriations, not as a substitute for it.

Democrats are pushing back on the idea they are responsible for the GOP’s go-it-alone approach — and they are warning about dire consequences.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a senior appropriator, said it would be “a tragic mistake” for Republicans to bankroll a war while sidelining their minority party colleagues.

Enacting funding through reconciliation, Coons said, “requires no compromise with the other party. And if that becomes the sole way we fund the core functions of government, that is a bad idea.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested Thursday that the fallout from the current funding fight could have long-term implications, warning that it's “not good for the country or for the future of the appropriations process or, for that matter, the future of the Senate.”

It’s just the latest blow to bipartisan norms of the congressional appropriations process during Trump’s second term. White House budget director Russ Vought has executed a playbook for undercutting cross-party funding negotiations, and Republican leaders have gone along with those tactics, including the stopgap funding patch that riled Democrats last spring and the enactment of a clawbacks package last summer that canceled billions of dollars Congress previously cleared with bipartisan support.

Many Republicans aren’t happy with how the latest step is unfolding, with top GOP appropriators especially concerned about funding a war effort without Democratic buy-in.

“I would prefer not to,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said late last month about clearing an emergency military package through the party-line process. But, he added, “we’ll wait and see. A lot of that depends on what the Democrats want to do.”

Three Hill Republican aides, granted anonymity to speak candidly, privately forecasted that the current funding breakdown will fuel a tit-for-tat future for the appropriations process. The worry is that Republican presidents will routinely be forced to use reconciliation to clear immigration enforcement funding through Congress, and Democratic presidents will have to use it to fund nondefense efforts GOP leaders are less keen on boosting.

Republicans are now exploring enacting immigration enforcement funding for the remainder of Trump’s presidency — not just the current fiscal year.

Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security funding panel, said a future Congress under Democratic control could follow the GOP’s example and use reconciliation to fund agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Health and Human Services.

“So I certainly have concerns with a bad precedent that they will be setting,” Cuellar said in an interview Thursday.

Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, said “the big deal here” is “shoving the dysfunctional discretionary stuff into reconciliation.”

“Because of the ability to do party-line legislating in the reconciliation bills, it allows a back door to party-line discretionary appropriating,” he said in an interview.

Glassman also sees the creeping use of reconciliation as a way to sidestep mutually negotiated guardrails on spending. Limitations on use of money, and how much time agencies have to spend it, are longtime hallmarks of bipartisan funding negotiations.

“If you throw money into these bills, then you lose sort of the control aspect that they love to put into the appropriations with the limitation provisions,” Glassman said.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said last week that Democrats’ refusal to fund the Border Patrol or ICE without major policy changes “sets a precedent that they may one day come to regret.”

Other senior congressional appropriators contend that the bipartisan agreements Collins helped broker in recent months are proof that the annual funding process is working and that reconciliation is not a workable alternative. Despite the DHS drama, Congress managed to approve more than $1.6 trillion for every other federal department following a 43-day government shutdown last fall.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s leading Democratic appropriator, said in a statement this week that “reconciliation will never be a substitute for the appropriations process.”

“Republicans must realize our country is safer and stronger when government funding decisions are made by both Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate,” she added.

Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.