Senate Republicans released their budget and began voting on it Tuesday afternoon. They will use it to set up an immigration enforcement budget reconciliation bill of roughly $75 billion.
Senators hope that movement will prompt the House to pass the Senate bill funding the rest of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the two-month DHS shutdown.
Appropriators have been informed the Trump administration will be unable to pay workers in May.
“They won’t have the money, the House has to pass the Senate bill,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told Semafor. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the “sequencing is important” to the House.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Semafor he made a “strong recommendation” to House GOP leadership and the White House to attach the “Shutdown Fairness Act,” which pays government workers during a shutdown, to the DHS funding bill.