House GOP pushes back on Senate’s ‘skinny’ plan to end record-breaking DHS shutdown

Senate Republicans are forging ahead with a two-step plan to end the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, but their House counterparts tell Fox News Digital they are not on board with the strategy.

A swath of House Republicans have voiced growing frustration that a forthcoming GOP-only funding package does not include other policy priorities beyond funding immigration enforcement ahead of November’s midterm elections. 

“I think we’ve got one last opportunity for reconciliation,” Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital in an interview. “I know some people are talking about two, but I think we’ve got one guaranteed shot.”

“I like the idea of making it bigger,” he added, mentioning defense funding and affordability concerns. “We’ve got a lot of important stuff to do and we need to get it done.”

ICE SHUTDOWN FIGHT MIGHT RESTRICT FEMA, COAST GUARD TO ‘LIFE-THREATENING’ EMERGENCIES

“I’m undecided,” Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told Fox News Digital, referring to the Senate’s approach. “I’ve got issues with it. We believe it should be more expansive.”

The Senate approved a budget resolution early Thursday largely along party lines that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term. 

Republicans are pursuing the partisan budget reconciliation process to bypass Democrats and fund immigration enforcement with GOP votes after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., refused to fund the department without sweeping reforms added to the proposal.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is racing to pass the Senate’s budget resolution as early as next week, at which point he can afford to lose only a handful of votes. President Donald Trump has set a June 1 deadline to fully fund immigration enforcement through a GOP-only bill, forcing Republicans to act quickly with little room for error.

Before the DHS shutdown House Republican leadership teased a budget reconciliation sequel to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would incorporate a diverse set of priorities, such as a defense supplemental package, spending cuts targeting fraud and policies aimed at lowering the cost of living.

Concerns among rank-and-file Republicans that a forthcoming budget bill will not include those provisions threaten to jeopardize that timeline.

House conservatives have also fiercely objected to the Senate passing a bipartisan partial DHS bill carving out ICE and the Border Patrol from the normal appropriations process and keeping those two agencies unfunded.

After Democrats in the upper chamber repeatedly filibustered DHS funding bills, the Senate approved legislation funding parts of the department that Democrats would support. The House has yet to take up that legislation.

“The bill the Senate sent over is totally unacceptable to conservatives,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., said Thursday, referring to the upper chamber’s partial DHS bill. “We will never vote or support in any way a bill that puts in a zero” for immigration enforcement, he added.

“The very premise of needing a reconciliation bill to pass funding for ICE and CBP is repulsive to me,” Higgins told Fox News Digital. “That sort of thing has never been done up here, to take an appropriations bill and sort of cherry pick what you don’t want in it and isolate whole agencies … I’m against that whole premise.”

BEHIND THE SCENES OF CONGRESS’ ELEVENTH-HOUR RUSH TO FUND THE DHS

Senate Republicans are largely unified on keeping the package as narrow as possible out of concern that adding more to the pot could stall lawmakers’ progress.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has sought to expedite the passage of a forthcoming budget bill by involving in the process just two panels —  the Senate Judiciary and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees.

“The vast majority of Republicans stuck together to do something Democrats are refusing to do: Fully fund the Border Patrol and ICE for three and a half years through the Trump presidency,” Graham said Thursday after the upper chamber adopted the budget blueprint. “As Senate Budget Committee Chairman, I am very proud of my colleagues.”

Still, some Senate Republicans agree with their House colleagues who want to super-size the forthcoming package out of fear that they may not get another shot before the midterms.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., argued that Republicans should try to beef up the package despite promises from leadership that there could be a third bite at the apple later in the year.

“I’m not saying anybody’s lying, they’re not. People probably intend to do a third reconciliation bill,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor. “But you’re not looking at Bambi’s baby brother here. There won’t be a third reconciliation bill. You know it … and I know it. This is it. This is the last train leaving the station.”

It is unclear whether the House will ultimately modify the Senate’s budget blueprint funding immigration enforcement.

Any changes to the resolution would kick it back to the Senate for reconciliation and require another marathon vote series before Congress could officially unlock the reconciliation process.

DHS, meanwhile, has warned this week it is short on funds to continue paying its employees through May.

Earlier in April, Trump ordered the department to use existing funds to provide backpay to federal employees, who had been furloughed or reporting to work without their salary during the funding lapse, which began in mid-February.