House Republicans succeeded late Wednesday in harnessing the special budget power to advance up to $75 billion for the immigration enforcement agencies Democrats refuse to fund without new guardrails — bringing Congress closer to ending the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
The vote was held open for more than five hours as lawmakers sought concessions from Speaker Mike Johnson around the farm bill, using the budget resolution as leverage. Finally, the chamber voted 214-212-1 to approve the fiscal blueprint the Senate advanced last week, unlocking the ability to draft and pass a party-line package containing tens of billions of dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Independent, voted “present.”
President Donald Trump wants the final producton his desk by June 1, completing one step in the two-part plan to resolve the DHS funding lapse that began more than 10 weeks ago.
“What choice do we have?” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said on the floor Wednesday afternoon, accusing Democrats of wanting to “defund ICE and CBP.”
For several hours Wednesday evening, it seemed as though the resolution would get tanked by members angry with leadership over separate farm bill issues and lingering concerns about an extension of a government spy power. The vote was held open for more than five hours as different groups battled Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team, attempting to use the budget vote as leverage to extract their own demands.
“Yeah, we’re gonna have a big family meeting in here. We’ll get everybody on the same page,” Johnson told reporters outside his office, nearly 90 minutes into the vote. He characterized the public GOP infighting as “watching the sausage get made.”
Finally a side agreement emerged that would involve decoupling a key ethanol issue from the farm bill when the House returns from recess in May — and holding a standalone vote allowing year-round sales of E15, an ethanol-gasoline blend fiscal hawks said would cost $1 billion. It was enough to break the dam and bring the budget resolution across the finish line.
In the final stretch of the standoff, Republicans who had originally voted against the budget measure began to flip their votes to “yes,” including Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming. Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana flipped the vote that got GOP leaders enough support to bring down the gavel and declare the resolution adopted.
The budget measure was also approved despite weeks of internal strife over the scope and substance of the blueprint. Many conservatives have been agitating to use the party-line process to enact other policy priorities, such as defense spending and cuts to social programs and health care benefits.
House Republican leaders ultimately clawed together support by promising to facilitate yet another reconciliation bill later this year that could incorporate hard-liners’ policy wishlist — the third this Congress, counting the massive tax-and-spending megabill the GOP enacted last summer.
The current party-line effort follows the collapse of bipartisan negotiations last month on new rules cracking down on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in January.
On the House floor before the budget measure was adopted, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) accused Republicans of funding ICE “with basically no strings attached,” rather than “deal with the reality of what they’ve created — a monster here, with American citizens being shot down in cold blood at point blank range in Minnesota.”
House Republican leaders are also under pressure in the coming days to clear a Senate-passed bill funding the nonimmigration agencies of DHS before lawmakers depart for a weeklong recess.
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