Senate Republican leaders on Thursday scrapped a planned vote on a $70-plus billion immigration-enforcement funding package after intraparty clashes over the Trump administration’s politically toxic $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and money for President Trump’s ballroom.
Republican leaders had been aiming to kick off a marathon vote-a-rama on the funding package and proposed amendments, but they ran into disputes on multiple fronts as they raced to finalize the legislative text and secure the 50 votes needed to pass the bill. With progress stalled, GOP leaders gave up hopes of passing the package by the June 1 deadline set by the president and instead headed home for their Memorial Day recess.
“We’re going home,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters.
Republicans were already expected to abandon a plan to include $1 billion in Secret Service funding, including some $220 million to secure President Trump’s new ballroom project, as part of their bill. An internal GOP backlash to the proposed funding meant that it likely wouldn’t have the votes needed to pass. The provision also ran into trouble with the Senate parliamentarian, who ruled over the weekend that it failed to comply with the chamber’s rules for the partisan budget reconciliation process Republicans are using to pass the legislation.
Then a firestorm of questions over the Justice Department’s announced creation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund raised additional concerns among lawmakers, further complicating the scramble to enact the reconciliation bill.
Critics charge that the deal essentially provides a taxpayer-funded slush fund for the president and his allies and amounts to blatant self-dealing. Angry GOP senators reportedly voiced their objections to the fund during a nearly two-hour meeting Thursday with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer who agreed to the “anti-weaponization” fund as part of a Justice Department deal to settle a questionable $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service by the president, two of his sons and his business.
Democrats had said that they would look to block the fund as part of a vote series on the funding bill or try to prevent payments to violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Republicans reportedly discussed proposing their own guardrails on the fund as they looked to head off potentially potent Democratic attacks on the issue. The White House had indicated to Senate Republicans that Trump could veto any bill that restricted the “anti-weaponization” fund and left out the money for the Secret Service and ballroom, according to Semafor, though a White House official disputed that report.
As Republican divisions festered, Senate Majority Leader John Thune canceled Thursday’s planned votes. “It was something that was supposed to be very narrow, targeted, focused, clean, straightforward,” a frustrated Thune said of the funding package, “and it got a little bit more complicated this week.”
With senators leaving for their long holiday break, House leaders, who had been waiting for the Senate to send over the funding bill, quickly followed suit and canceled Friday votes.
Asked by a reporter at the White House if he was losing control of Senate Republicans, Trump said: “I don’t know, I really don’t know. I can tell you I only do what’s right.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the Republican disarray and said that Americans are suffering because of it. “This afternoon, Republicans — so divided, so dysfunctional, so disorganized — are fleeing Washington,” Schumer said at a news conference. “Their majority can’t melt down fast enough, not when Americans’ financial situation is melting down every day.”
The bottom line: Republicans are divided over Trump’s priorities and that has stalled the immigration funding plan they support, meaning it won’t get to the president’s desk by his self-imposed June 1 deadline. Thune said the Senate would pick up where it left off when lawmakers return next month.
