House Republicans grumbling about ‘skinny’ ICE funding package complicates its path

House Republicans grumbling about the structure of a “skinny” reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement — and their skepticism about prospects for passing another GOP-only funding package this year — are creating hurdles for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as he aims to put the measure on the House floor next week.

“This will probably be the last reconciliation we do before the end of the year. We got the break coming up, and it’s just we got to address — we got to put more to it than just this,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

The Senate in the wee hours of Thursday morning adopted a budget reconciliation framework to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol for three and a half years. It’s part of a two-step process to end the record-long Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown after Republicans were unable to come to an agreement with Democrats, who were seeking reforms to immigration enforcement, to fund the agencies. 

Republican leaders resorted to using the special reconciliation process, which bypasses the threat of Democrats blocking the bill in the Senate, to fund those agencies while the Senate also passed a bipartisan bill to fund the rest of DHS.

DHS is warning it will soon run out of the money, which it has been using to pay salaries and perform other critical functions.

But hard-line conservatives in the Freedom Caucus and beyond have long expressed discontent about breaking off ICE and Border Patrol funding from the rest of DHS, and some are not yet sold on voting for the “skinny” package separately.

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) said he would not support the framework that passed the Senate overnight as-is, as he would prefer to fund all of DHS together.

The bigger issue,........

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