The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday that major pieces of the GOP’s party-line immigration enforcement package do not comply with the chamber’s rules — a setback to Republicans racing to clear the bill this month.
The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, found that four parts of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s portion of the legislation will need to be reworked — or risk Democrats forcing a floor vote on each provision that would be subject to a 60-vote threshold, according to a statement from Budget Committee Democrats Thursday night.
Republicans are now expected to try to rewrite the provisions to meet MacDonough’s approval, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose private strategy. They will need to work quickly if they are going to meet the June 1 deadline President Donald Trump has set for clearing the legislation, recognizing that the House will need time to pass the package as well.
Democrats immediately declared victory.
“This fight is just getting started,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement, adding that Democrats will force Republicans “over and over to defend their real priority: Trump’s palace over your paycheck.”
But Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Majority Leader John Thune, said the ruling simply will require “technical fixes that were not unexpected.”
“We look forward to continued productive work” with the parliamentarian, he added, “to fully fund Border Patrol and immigration enforcement.”
Though senators could technically overrule MacDonough, they generally defer to her interpretations of the restrictions governing what is permissible in a filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation bill.
MacDonough has ruled against a line in the bill that would fund the screening of people entering the United States, as well as $19.1 billion for parts of Customs and Border Protection. According to Democrats, she found those pieces of the legislation violate the strict rules of the reconciliation process because they would impact policy beyond the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — one of the two panels Republicans directed in the budget framework they adopted last month that unlocked the ability to advance the legislation in the Senate by a simple majority.
That could be an easier fix for Republicans, since the Judiciary Committee, the second of the two committees, also has jurisdiction over DHS. But the parliamentarian also took issue with a section that includes $2.5 billion Republicans are trying to enact to bolster the funds they enacted last summer through their party-line tax and spending megabill, as well as language that would allow funding to be used for initial screenings of unaccompanied immigrant children.
MacDonough is expected to make her rulings on provisions contained in the Judiciary Committee’s portion of the immigration enforcement package as soon as Friday. Lawmakers are awaiting a verdict on whether they can use reconciliation to fund security infrastructure involved in Trump’s ballroom project.
