Republicans split on best path to advance Trump’s agenda in Congress

House and Senate Republicans are charting competing courses to implement President Trump’s top agenda items, including boosting funds for security along the U.S. southern border and extending tax cuts.

The Senate budget committee is expected to begin marking up a budget resolution Wednesday that begins the process of reconciliation to provide $175 billion to secure the southern border and $150 billion in new military spending.

“It would be enough money for four years to implement President Trump’s border agenda, immigration agenda on the security side,” budget Chairman Lindsey Graham told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday.

Graham spoke after a closed-door briefing with other GOP senators, OMB Director Russ Vought and border czar Tom Homan. He said the pair begged for additional funding and said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is running out of money.

“After that briefing, if the Republican Party cannot provide the money to the Trump administration to do all the things they need to do to make us safe, we have nobody to blame but ourselves,” Graham said. “Because we have the ability through reconciliation to do this, and I just want to do it sooner rather than later.”

One or two bills, that is the question 

Senate Republicans want to proceed with a two-bill approach in order to act more expeditiously on the president’s priorities at the border, and then return later this year to address extending tax cuts. GOP senators have expressed concern that combining those items into one bill risks making it too complicated and unwieldy to pass quickly.

“To my friends in the House – we’re moving because we have to,” Graham, R-S.C., said. “I wish you the best. I want one big beautiful bill, but I cannot and will not go back to South Carolina and justify not supporting the president’s immigration plan.”

Across the Capitol, House Republican leaders have been pushing a one-bill approach that encompasses top administration priorities like immigration, energy, defense and taxes.

The House has different considerations than the Senate. GOP members say putting the tax component into a separate bill down the road could jeopardize it altogether.

House Republicans have a razor thin majority and it’s difficult enough to satisfy the various factions within the conference to get on board with one bill, let alone two.

“It’s a nonstarter,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., of the potential to go with the Senate’s budget resolution. Johnson also indicated addressing the debt ceiling, something Trump has requested, will be part of the House plan.

But Johnson’s conference isn’t yet aligned with how to go about the one-bill approach. The speaker’s plan has already been undermined earlier this week when the hardline House Freedom Caucus released its own budget resolution, representing the first of a two-step reconciliation plan.

“Given the current delay in the House on moving a comprehensive reconciliation bill, moving a smaller targeted bill now makes the most sense to deliver a win for the President and the American people,” Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., said in a statement.

Trump has previously expressed support for the one-bill path but has also said he cares less about the process and more that it gets done.

Budget resolution key to unlocking reconciliation

Both chambers are working toward a budget tool called reconciliation in order to achieve their policy goals.

Reconciliation is a process that allows some types of legislation to pass with a simple majority and avoid the threat of a filibuster, which requires 60 senators to overcome. It’s the same mechanism that congressional Democrats used to pass parts of former President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

Republicans have 53 seats in the Senate and can’t expect any support from Democrats to get them over the 60-vote threshold, so they turn to reconciliation.

The first step of that process is a budget resolution, which directs various committees to develop legislation that achieves certain budgetary goals. The committees write those bills to achieve specific targets and then the budget committee assembles those bills together into one large bill that can’t be filibustered.

Graham pointed out Tuesday that committees will also be directed to find offsets for the border and defense spending.