House conservatives are firing a warning shot at their Republican counterparts in the Senate as a deal begins to take shape on ending the six-week Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.
Senate Republicans are eyeing a second “big, beautiful bill” via the budget reconciliation process aimed at funding portions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that would likely get little to no Democratic support.
That bill would also include parts of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE America) Act, legislation to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast ballots in federal elections.
But a growing contingent of House Republicans who are refusing to vote for any Senate-led legislation are crying foul on that portion of the plan.
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“Senate Republicans refused to force a talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act because it would have allowed Democrats to offer unlimited amendments. Now, Senate R’s claim they will pass SAVE America Act via reconciliation (which may not even be possible under the Senate’s arcane rules), which would… checks notes …allow Democrats to offer unlimited amendments,” the conservative House Freedom Caucus said in a statement posted to X on Tuesday.
“This is gaslighting. The American people are not stupid and will not accept more failure theater from Republicans in Congress.”
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., who led a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., vowing to oppose Senate bills until the SAVE America Act was passed, signaled he would reserve final judgment until a legislative proposal was released. But he did signal some skepticism in comments to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
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“It will not resolve my issue. I mean, look, they can say they’ll put it in reconciliation if they want. But I will continue to vote no on all Senate bills until the SAVE America Act is passed,” Fine said.
He made an exception for funding DHS, however, particularly if the final Senate bill was a modified version of that which the House already passed in January.
Republican senators huddled with President Donald Trump and others at the White House late on Monday, and emerged hopeful that an end to the shutdown could be in sight.
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The working framework would see ICE funding carved from the broader DHS spending bill, something Senate Democrats have tried to do in recent weeks but were blocked by Senate Republicans. That means most of the agency would be reopened, and ICE would be dealt with in the future through budget reconciliation, the process that nearly ripped the GOP apart last year when they passed the “big, beautiful bill.” And part of the deal would also see Republicans pair portions of the SAVE America Act tossed in with ICE funding, which some Senate Republicans are already skeptical of.
Only parts of ICE would be left to reconciliation, however, with the majority of the agency, save for its enforcement and removal operations, being funded in the initial compromise deal, according to PBS.
The remainder of DHS would be funded via a bipartisan deal that could be released as soon as Tuesday.
But the budget reconciliation process is a long and politically arduous path that could take months — a particularly difficult feat in an election year.
There’s also been skepticism in both the House and Senate that Republicans’ razor-thin majorities could unite enough to pass another massive bill, like the one signed into law by Trump in July that mainly dealt with his tax plans.
Conservatives have also noted that there’s little chance many of the SAVE America Act’s provisions could survive the strict guardrails around what can be included in reconciliation.
A source familiar with the House Freedom Caucus’s thinking also panned the prospective deal to Fox News Digital.
“Radical progressive Democrats shut down Homeland Security to protect criminal aliens. Why on earth would we hand them exactly what they want by keeping the deportation wing unfunded?” the source said on Tuesday. “We hold the leverage. Don’t surrender it. No more kicking immigration enforcement down the road, so Democrats can take a victory lap.”
It would put the group at odds with not only Republican leaders in the Senate, but potentially the White House as well.
A White House official told Fox News Digital before the deal became official that, “Conversations are ongoing, but this deal seems to be acceptable.”
And a source familiar with negotiations on DHS retorted to Fox News Digital that the Freedom Caucus’ argument comparing the talking filibuster with reconciliation was “not even close to being the same.”
The key difference is that during reconciliation there is limited debate and only amendments that deal directly with what’s in the package can be offered, while in a talking filibuster there is unlimited debate and unlimited amendments.
The Senate GOP wanted to avoid the latter scenario, given that they aren’t unified to block every Democratic amendment that could have drastically altered the SAVE America Act.