Congressional Democrats are unilaterally and unprecedentedly refusing to pass a normal Department of Homeland Security spending bill. So, Republicans are taking an equally partisan approach to ending what’s now the nation’s single longest government shutdown.
With President Donald Trump’s blessing, both Republican-controlled chambers of Congress are moving to fund DHS fully through the rest of his second term. The effort involves a second attempt to use Senate procedures to pass bills with a bare majority of 51 votes, rather than the usual 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. Reconciliation, as it’s known, was last used to enact the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s sweeping tax-and-spending law.
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The issue ought to indeed be a top priority, not just as a matter of punishing Democratic intransigence and enabling Trump’s agenda. But also for national security.
Markwayne Mullin, the new DHS secretary, has warned that despite the executive branch pilfering under metaphorical couch cushions to pay staff, the department’s funds will entirely dry up by May. Trump’s 2025 tax law fully funds workers in agencies at the front lines of his administration’s deportations agenda, namely Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet, some 20,000 civilian employees have gone unpaid in both this shutdown and a 2025 predecessor.
More than an estimated 100,000 DHS employees — including those responsible for counterterrorism preparation in light of the FIFA World Cup and America 250 celebrations this summer — have gone unpaid for more than half of the first seven months of this fiscal year.
‘Skinny’ Senate GOP bill needs to get fatter
It’s clear why Senate Republicans emphasize passing a speedy reconciliation bill over a too sizable one — so these federal workers can be made whole. But in Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-SD) insistence that the bill be so skinny it’s “anorexic-like,” conservatives are correct to worry that the Senate is costing Trump a last major shot at codifying his agenda into law.
To be sure, there are serious parliamentary limitations on what might be included. Reconciliation bills must focus on budgetary matters only. And, theoretically, they must pay for themselves over a decade after their enactment.
Given the razor-thin House Republican majority and the 53-47 Senate GOP edge, it makes sense to exclude one of Trump’s top legislative wish-list items, covering American voting procedures. Trump, at every opportunity, pushes on Thune to put forward the SAVE America Act, which would include voter ID requirements. Yet, this falls outside of the budget’s purview.
Still, all hope is not lost. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been itching for months to pass a second reconciliation bill, less substantial but “just as beautiful” as Trump’s 2025 tax-and-spending law. Since using the parliamentary procedure would negate the need for congressional Republicans to court Democratic votes.
There’s already a strong template for what it would include. The Republican Study Committee has outlined some $1.6 trillion in new spending cuts for a second reconciliation bill, largely accomplished through curtailing further waste and fraud in federal entitlements and stopping the flow of welfare to noncitizens. These would not only serve as helpful pay-fors that could render a second reconciliation bill not just deficit-neutral but actually deficit-shrinking.
Thune prefers to leave all of this on the cutting-room floor. In the wee morning hours of April 23, Senate Republicans, excluding Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), passed the budget resolution paving the way for an “anorexic” reconciliation bill.
The Senate GOP should really be taking the opposite approach.
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House Republicans control 217 seats in the lower chamber and Democrats 212, with several vacancies. And House Democrats are in a strong position to win the majority later this year. That gives congressional Republicans about six months to codify Trump’s budgetary priorities into law, and this second reconciliation bill is likely the last shot.
It need not equal the size of Trump’s 2025 tax-and-spending legacy-building law. But it should deliver the defense spending and fiscal reforms that Democrats will surely stonewall for the rest of Trump’s political career if we let this moment go to waste.
Tiana Lowe Doescher (@TianaTheFirst) is an economics columnist for the Washington Examiner.
