Thune: Republicans to keep GOP-only bill to fund border security ‘as narrow as possible’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Thursday said he suspects that Republicans will try to keep a GOP-only bill to fund border security operations “as narrow as possible” so Republicans can meet President Trump’s June 1 deadline to pass the bill.

“Everybody is, I think, singularly focused …. around the things we have to do on the border, on ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and CBP [Customs and Border Protection],” Thune told reporters on Thursday morning. 

“The other things implicate other committees and create jurisdictional challenges and germane issues on the floor,” Thune said. “Our theory of the case behind all this was to keep that thing as narrow and focused as possible, and that maximizes, I think, the speed at which we can do it and the support for it.”

His comments come as lawmakers face uncertainty about what such a bill could look like. Republicans have discussed using one of their couple remaining chances to pass a........

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