After a weeklong recess, Senate Republicans return Monday with their focus set on ways to move their budget reconciliation package, which hit several hurdles before the Memorial Day break.
The House, which has been on standby while Senate leadership works out how much of the White House wishlist they can salvage, is returning later this week, with its first vote scheduled for Wednesday.
Congress is already behind the June 1 deadline that President Donald Trump gave to get the package to his desk. Republican senators had hoped to pass the bill before they jetted for the recess, but concerns over the Justice Department’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund — which Democrats and some Republicans have warned could reward participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — derailed those efforts.
The bill, which would provide nearly $72 billion, mostly for immigration enforcement funding, also faces an uphill battle to fold in $1 billion in security funding for the Secret Service, including for a White House ballroom. That provision’s chance of inclusion seems to be dimming, given that the Senate parliamentarian raised objections to it on procedural grounds last month.
And House Republican appropriators are not planning to include that full $1 billion amount in their fiscal 2027 Homeland Security spending bill, set for release this week, according to Homeland Security Appropriations Chairman Mark Amodei, R-Nev.
