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Was the Senate Parliamentarian Asleep? How Did Huge Additional ICE Funding Remain in the Mega-Bill [1]
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Date: 2025-07-24
The Byrd Rule bars provisions that are considered “extraneous” to the federal budget when bills are passed with only 50 votes in the Senate during the reconciliation process. 60 votes would normally be required to pass bills.
According to the The Hill, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled against a series of provisions in the recent mega-bill which were then stripped from the bill.
The elements that were removed related to Republican efforts to limit Medicaid provisions, limit ACA subsidies associated with abortion, empower state border security and immigration enforcement, limit the use of contempt powers by the courts, limit SNAP benefits for non-citizens, eliminate Consumer Financial Protection Bureau funding, repeal the EPA’s right to limit air pollution, and others.
The overall effect was positive but certain things mysteriously remained in the bill.
The Republicans threw in the kitchen sink and their provisions which were not related to (or were extraneous to) the federal budget were supposedly removed from the final bill.
But how is it that the extra $75 billion funding for Border Enforcement remained in the bill?
As CBS News notes, “Overall, the Republican-led Congress set aside roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security efforts through the legislation, including $75 billion in extra funding for ICE, making it by far the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.”
But how is spending enormous additional money for a law enforcement agency related in any way to reducing the federal budget?
The reconciliation process requiring only 50 votes to pass is supposed to “… remove provisions [from laws] that had no budgetary effect, that increased spending or reduced revenues when the reconciliation instructions called for reduced spending or increased revenues …”
But the $170B for border control money in the mega-bill radically increases federal spending.
This budget-busting provision in a reconciliation bill appears to be totally illegitimate.
The Senate Parliamentarian appears to have been blind or deaf with respect to the goal of reducing spending in the reconciliation process by not stripping the additional Border Patrol funding from the bill.
But it was mostly the responsibility of Democratic Senators to raise this issue and demand that this funding be eliminated.
Did these Democratic senators want to turn the US into a police state because that is what they are allowing to happen by not objecting to this avalanche of money being used to empower ICE.
During the August recess, Democrats at town halls should demand to know why their Senators and Congressmen rolled over and gave Republicans the power and enormous funding to send masked police into our cities and arrest people without due process or probable cause.
This should have NEVER happened.
Voters should demand answers.
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