Until they get there, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) remains unfunded.
Democrats blocked DHS funding after demanding so-called "reforms" for one of its agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but then retreated from a compromise when the GOP agreed to it.
Some in both the House and Senate believe budget reconciliation is now the best option, and there appears to be growing momentum for that in the House of Representatives.
The filibuster has been in place since 1806 as a tool for the minority party. Thune says there aren’t enough votes in his party to remove that time-honored tradition, even though many fear Democrats will do so quickly the next time they’re in control of the Senate.
“I'm supportive of ending the filibuster. As much as I'd like to have that, when the minorities stop awful legislation by the Democrats, they're going to end it,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) said on “Washington Watch” last week.
But Johnson, an apparent minority voice on the issue among Senate Republicans, is also strongly urging budget reconciliation in the House.
The process would allow the Senate to pass DHS funding with 51 votes, provided it’s presented as part of a budget reconciliation package.
But budget reconciliation is easier said than done, House Republicans say.
Key challenges include narrow Republican majorities in both chambers, internal GOP divisions over fiscal responsibility, and the complexity of offsetting large expenditures.
Speaker Mike Johnson can afford to lose only one Republican vote, and fiscal hawks like Reps. Chip Roy and Tim Burchett have expressed concerns about funding the package — especially with added costs from military operations in Iran — without sufficient spending cuts.
The issue for some in the House is left-leaning and undecided voters in some of their districts back home.
“The reality is we will be fine in the Senate. The House is where we're going to have the problem. You couldn't make the bill too conservative for me, but we're going to have people in swing districts who are going to have a real problem with it. The speaker knows that. We all know that we're working hard to try to figure out a way forward,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Oklahoma) said on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.
The death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa of California and the resignation of Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have left Republicans have narrowed Republicans’ slim House majority to one vote, leaving Johnson a very narrow needle to thread.
Not only does the speaker have to assure all Republicans are on the same page, but he also can’t afford any of them to miss the vote for illness or family emergency.
LaMalfa’s death and Greene’s resignation both occurred in the first week of the new year, meaning the GOP House majority was slightly larger when it passed the Big Beautiful Bill through reconciliation last summer.
“It’s a very difficult situation when you're trying to pass something as monumental as a second reconciliation bill, something that we need to get done because there are so many things from funding DHS to protecting our borders, making sure that the illegals that came here, some 10 million plus that came under Joe Biden, that we have a way to get them out of the country,” Hern told show host Tony Perkins.
If reconciliation fails, Hern says GOP leaders from both chambers will need a White House meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss the way forward.
“The Democrats are not going to help us in this matter. They've shown that,” he said.
