The Senate Budget Committee advanced the reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement after a vote along party lines.The bill aims to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which were excluded from budget negotiations under a deal to end the most recent government shutdown. Democrats voiced their usual protests over the bill, criticizing the conduct of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) sought to find middle ground in his comments, saying Democrats favored border security but he opposed Republicans’ move to bypass the filibuster by pushing the funding via the reconciliation process.
“The right way to do it is like we did in 2013, or even in 2018,” he said. “We can find a bipartisan path to do these things. Reconciliation is obviously an attractive item, because it allows one side to just do whatever the heck it wants, but this is an issue where there is some common cause, if you just sit down and work hard enough to find it.”
“So I’ll oppose the unilateral effort that would put more money into agencies that could be better spent elsewhere.”
After extensive criticism of ICE and the DHS from Democrats, including invocations of the January killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) got in the last word by redirecting attention to those who had suffered as a result of illegal immigration.
