immediate reaction on the GOP reconciliation meltdown
Coming into the week, Republicans had intended to move the reconciliation bill containing the multi-year funding for CBP and ICE through both chambers. They were aiming to have the vote-a-rama in the Senate on Wednesday, and perhaps move a rule and the bill through the House as early as Thursday. But now they have bailed and will head home for the Memorial Day recess without further action on the bill, and won't be back until June, after the (artificial) deadline the president had previously set.
This is the president's fault, plain and simple.First, the White House forced into the bill the $1B for the ballroom security, which completely blew up in their face and delayed action. Then they announced the insane $1.776B slush pile they were going to pull out of the judgement/settlement fund to compensate victims of government weaponization.
Both of those things have gone off like bombs on the Hill, the ballroom like a large conventional weapon and the slush fund a thermonuclear blast. There simply weren't 50 votes for the ballroom money, so that was coming out of the reconciliation bill. And it was starting to look like there were a lot more than 50 votes to block the slush fund, and that language was going into the reconciliation bill. Thune issued a rebuke. GOP Senators revolted at their lunch with Acting Attorney General Blanche today. And there are bipartisan bills in the House to kill it. And lots of folks are livid.
You can, in theory, debate the merits of either proposal, and especially the ballroom. But the political optics—especially on the compensation fund—are just deadly from any angle. As Senator Cramer allegedly said in the lunch, as a political matter, "it's unexplainable."
The administration is now whining that the compensation fund has nothing to do with the reconciliation bill. But that's not how appropriations ever work, in or out. If there's a vehicle sitting there where legislative action can hitch a ride, you expect it to. Whether it's new funding or new limits on old funding. Is that fair? It doesn't matter. That's how it works, and everyone knows it.
Also note that the ballroom and the compensation fund operate differently procedurally. The ballroom funding requires an appropriation. The administration was hoping to put that in the reconciliation bill as the path of least resistance, but they can fight another day if it’s left out. The compensation fund, on the other hand, from the administration’s view just needs Congress to not stop it. That’s both good—a clean bill doesn’t leave a trace and no one has to vote for the fund—but also bad because once the languages is in the fund is dead. There won’t be another day to fight. Note further that, at the legal level, the bill stalling out right now blocks the ballroom funding but doesn’t affect the compensation fund.
Even worse, the Democrats were poised to make them vote on both topics again and again during the vote-a-rama in the Senate. That would put the squeeze on a heck of a lot of Republicans, caught between the president and public opinion.
Remember, we're in the middle of primary season, so you have everything from GOP Members looking to toe to the party line all the way to defeated and bitter GOP Senators looking to kick the White House in the teeth with their newfound freedom from the voters. It's not a great combination for the leadership looking to shepherd the bill.
Trump's political instincts are a lot better than most people give him credit for, but he's absolutely at his worst when it comes to his personal financial schemes and corruption plans. That he would even consider jeopardizing the core funding priority of his administration over this stuff is complete and total political malpractice.
There's a report the administration has privately threatened a veto, as well. That has to be a bargaining bluff. Even conditional on him having his worst instincts when it comes to this stuff, and even conditional on him having vetoed (and gotten overridden) on NDAA over the confederate base names in 2020 and other sidecar provisions, I just cannot imagine him risking the lock-in of the CBP/ICE money through a potential Democratic Congress in 2027, just to throw a temper tantrum over his vanity projects.
Remember, unlike the Big Beautiful Bill, the CPB and ICE money in the reconciliation bill is for the baseline operational funding for the agencies, not supplementary funds. Getting it passed now would be a huge win for the conservatives on border security, and essentially prevent the need to bargain with the Democrats at all on the issue, even if the GOP lost control of one or both chambers in the Fall. To say this is mission critical for a huge swath of conservatives is an understatement. They abandoned the traditional bipartisan appropriations process in order to do this as a party-line-priority.
Anyone who is surprised that Congress is pushing back on this stuff, because they believe Trump just gets what he wants on the spending power, really hasn't been paying attention to the Hill. Perhaps the ferocity of the response is more than many people expected, but this stuff was always going over like a lead zeppelin, and the administration absolutely should have seen it coming.