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Senate Republicans will soon learn the parliamentary fate of $1 billion in security funding for Trump’s East Wing ballroom project, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled some immigration enforcement funding ran afoul of the Senate rules Thursday night.
On Friday, Democrats will challenge the inclusion of that money in the party’s budget reconciliation package via the Byrd Rule with the Senate parliamentarian, according to three people familiar with the plan. Even if it survives the “Byrd bath,” the proposed funding doesn’t yet have 50 votes.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, called the Secret Service briefing this week “compelling” and said that senators don’t want to “play around” with White House security — but he added that he’s “still looking at it.”
Under budget reconciliation, language must primarily have a direct effect on the budget rather than be a policy change.
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Republicans know their rollout of the funding could have been better. “The narrative got off-track early on, because people were equating that package with the ballroom,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “But then the Secret Service came in and explained to us that they need to for security purposes.”
Republicans can rewrite the stricken sections from Thursday’s Byrd bath to comply with the rules. Cornyn said he’s “optimistic” that the parliamentarian will let the White House security funding through.
“It has to be primarily budgetary and incidentally be a matter of policy. That’s the argument that advocates are gonna have to make to the parliamentarian. We’ll see what she says,” Cornyn said.
Roughly a half-dozen Republican senators are staying noncommittal about the money until the parliamentarian rules, including Sullivan and Sens. Jon Husted of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Democrats are already attacking the money, but that’s only a hint of what’s to come this fall on the campaign trail if the funding is approved as part of the GOP-only package.
And there’s no guarantee that the House can pass it either. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republican leaders are “hearing our members out, trying to figure out the best language.”
“We are still defining what reconciliation looks like,” said Murkowski, who voted against the budget setting up the party-line bill and believes the security money faces “challenges” with the parliamentarian. “It would help all of us if the expenditures were more clearly delineated on the security side.”