U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz sounds like he wants to give Democrats exactly what they’ve been asking for to end the nearly six-week-long, partial government shutdown.
But there’s a catch.
On his podcast, Cruz said he and other Republicans should accept the Democrats’ offer to fund the entire Department of Homeland Security, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That might sound like a terrible idea to Republicans who support the immigration enforcement crackdown under President Donald Trump.
But Cruz reminded his audience that, unlike TSA agents and other DHS employees, ICE agents are still getting paid during the shutdown because their funding came from Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, not the usual appropriations process.
And, he said, the Republicans still have a path to fund ICE for the next decade without the need for any negotiation with Democrats.
“So, agree to fund everything except ICE. And then what I urge my colleagues is, if they force us to do that, we should immediately take up a reconciliation bill and fund ICE for the next 10 years,” Cruz said. “And what I’ve advocated for, we should increase ICE’s budget by 10%.”
Reconciliation is a procedural mechanism that allows the Senate to get around the typical 60-vote threshold on budget bills, meaning they would just need Republicans to stick together.
The first part of the plan could be appealing to Democrats, who’ve been blaming Republicans for the TSA lines at airports. Just last week, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, said Democrats offered to fund TSA and the Coast Guard, but Republicans kept turning them down because of the fight over ICE funding.
“Before I give billions more to ICE, who already have billions and billions of dollars, we should get the masks off and make them follow warrant requirements,” Casar said last week.
But Cruz’s proposed follow-up bill using reconciliation would likely leave the party seething.