On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted along party lines to start debate on a budget resolution to spend up to $70 billion to fund two of the agencies that are carrying out President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Over the coming weeks, they hope to finalize funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through 2029 – despite Democratic opposition – through a special process known as budget reconciliation. It’s part of Republicans’ strategy to end the 66-day partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, as Democrats demand changes to immigration law enforcement tactics.
Reconciliation is a complicated procedure that both parties have increasingly used to skirt impasses caused by partisan divisions and pass budget-related bills including the Republicans’ tax-and-spending bill last year. Congress’ increasing use of reconciliation signals a shift away from its regular lawmaking process in a way that some experts say de-emphasizes debate and gives the majority party more control over funding.
Why We Wrote This
The reconciliation process was originally a tool to help Congress keep spending in line with revenue. But Republicans and Democrats have gotten creative with it over the years, and it’s now become a way for the majority party to sidestep the political opposition.
“Historically, reconciliation was created as a tool for deficit reduction to bring revenue and spending in line with budget targets,” says Dominik Lett, a budget analyst at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. “Increasingly, it’s being used as a [partisan] tool to … boost spending and increase the deficit.”
What is reconciliation?
Traditionally, the minority party in the Senate can try to block the majority by using a filibuster, a long-standing Senate practice of either holding up debate to block a law’s passage or prolonging debate before a vote. Reconciliation, however, protects certain budget-related laws from the filibuster. Passing a reconciliation bill comes with a complex set of procedures, but if successful, it’s a way the majority party can pass a budget bill despite opposition from the minority.
The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 created reconciliation. Since then, Congress has passed 24 reconciliation bills, the most recent being Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer.
Under the rules for reconciliation, debate time is limited in the Senate. That effectively ends the filibuster, for which 60 votes are normally needed to end debate.
“Majorities of both parties have increasingly relied on the fast-track procedure [of reconciliation] to advance their agendas,” says James Wallner, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.
Why is reconciliation being used more?
Reconciliation was originally conceived of as a tool to reassert Congress’ authority over the budget and to keep the federal deficit under control, says Steven S. Smith, a professor at Arizona State University and co-author of “The American Congress.”
But Republicans got more creative during George W. Bush’s presidency. They had control of the House and Senate, and President Bush was eager to get his tax priorities passed into law. But with a 50-50 party-line split in the Senate, Democrats could readily use the filibuster to block Republicans.
So, Republicans used reconciliation to sidestep the filibuster and, no longer needing to reach the 60-vote threshold as they would have with a stand-alone bill, were able to pass Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.
“That kind of broke open the thinking ever since about the ways in which the reconciliation bill can be used to avoid a Senate filibuster,” says Dr. Smith. Democrats would later use reconciliation to pass key adjustments to the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
More recently, reconciliation has been seen as a potential tool for an entirely new purpose: as a substitute for the regular funding process. Typically, Congress funds much of the government on a one-year basis in a process known as appropriations.
But members of both parties have started using reconciliation to pass multi-year funding bills for things that would typically receive money on a yearly basis, which would subject that spending to annual reviews. In 2022, the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act allotted $80 billion in mandatory spending to the Internal Revenue Service. In 2025, the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided funds for multiple years for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
Why is passing a reconciliation bill so complicated?
The rules for reconciliation mean that it’s a drawn-out, multistep process that can take weeks or months.
First, the House and the Senate must each pass a budget resolution that sets levels of spending, revenue, and debt.
Once both chambers have done that, relevant committees typically write specific legislation for how to achieve the goals laid out in the budget resolution. The result is the reconciliation bill. Once developed, it goes back to the House and Senate to again be passed in each chamber.
In the Senate, debate on a reconciliation bill is capped at 20 hours. After debate concludes, senators can continue offering amendments in a marathon session known colloquially on Capitol Hill as a “vote-a-rama.” That could go on for hours, often well into the night.
There’s another thing senators have to keep in mind: Everything in a reconciliation bill has to be budget related. The bill and each of its amendments must be able to pass a thorough review by the Senate parliamentarian – the chamber’s official adviser on all things rules and procedures – to make sure each provision in the bill is relevant to spending, revenue, or debt levels.
Reconciliation bills also pose a unity challenge for party leaders. They tend to involve the majority party working in lockstep to avoid minority-party obstruction – and these large spending bills rarely please everyone.
What do Republicans hope to accomplish with their second reconciliation bill of this Congress?
Republicans’ key objective is to fund ICE and CBP. The Department of Homeland Security is partially shut down, and Democrats have been unwilling to fund these agencies without significant reforms of immigration enforcement tactics, including face-mask bans for federal immigration enforcement officers.
The two agencies have enough money from the Republicans’ tax-and-spending bill last year to continue operations.
President Trump has given congressional Republicans a June 1 deadline to fund these agencies through reconciliation. Congress would still need to pass a separate bill to fund other agencies in DHS, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Unlike Republicans’ last reconciliation bill, which included a broad range of priorities, Republican leadership hopes to keep this one focused on ICE and CBP. But other members of the party have their own priorities.
Senators such as Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri want to take the opportunity to try to address cost of living issues. Others, including Republican Ted Cruz of Texas hope to tackle defense funding.