Republicans in the upper chamber are ramping up the pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to swiftly approve a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), arguing that tens of thousands of federal workers could miss paychecks next month if the House delays much longer.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says Senate passage of a budget resolution early Thursday morning shows he has the votes to pass a budget reconciliation package next month to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.

He believes that should give the House the green light to approve the Senate-passed bill to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Johnson, under pressure from Republicans in the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus and beyond, has said he won’t move the bipartisan DHS bill until after passage of the reconciliation package.

But GOP senators fear that plan leaves a good chance that Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin could run out of money to pay TSA agents and other critical federal workers.

“That’s certainly the hope and expectation,” Thune said when asked about the prospect of the House moving quickly on the Senate-passed Homeland Security funding bill now that the Senate has passed a budget resolution, taking a major step toward unlocking the special reconciliation process that will allow GOP senators to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

“It seems like that should help answer the question they’ve had” about whether the Senate would be able to deliver a budget reconciliation bill to the House to fund ICE and Border Patrol through 2029, Thune said.

“I’m hoping that now having produced a reconciliation bill they can perhaps get over that hurdle and fund the other agencies because they’re running out of money, and Markwayne’s made that very clear,” Thune said.

The Senate GOP leader said the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t have enough money to keep paying federal workers for the amount of time it will take the Senate to pass the budget reconciliation bill.

“From a timing standpoint, they run out of money I think before we’re going to be able to get the reconciliation bill across the floor. But I think having produced the budget resolution to me should serve as a signal to anybody over [in the House] that’s concerned about that, that we’re going to be following through with ensuring that the [ICE and Border Patrol] money for the future is available,” Thune said.

DHS has been shut down for more than two months, but President Trump earlier this month ordered that essential workers be paid. Mullin warned Tuesday that the department has access to enough money to pay workers for only one more pay period.

“I’ve got one payroll left and there is no more emergency funds, so the president can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money there,” he said.

One Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on frustration within the Senate GOP over the failure to advance the Senate-passed Homeland Security appropriations bill in the lower chamber said Johnson doesn’t have full control of the House GOP conference.

“I don’t think Johnson has the votes,” said the GOP lawmaker, who asserted that the Speaker has shifted his criteria for acting on the partial Homeland Security funding bill.

“There continues to be a delay game. First it was Johnson said we want to see you pass the budget resolution. Now it sounds like, ‘We want to pass the whole reconciliation [package],’” the senator added. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

Johnson initially called the Senate’s plan to separate funding for ICE and Border Patrol from the rest of DHS a “joke” and refused to put it on the floor. A week later, after Trump endorsed the plan, Johnson released a statement with Thune backing it. That, in turn, drew widespread ire in the Republican conference, including on an hours-long conference call during which conservatives seethed over the change.

The Speaker this week again insisted on moving reconciliation before passing the bipartisan Senate bill.

Senate Republicans had hoped that Trump would play a more forceful role in urging Johnson to immediately vote on the appropriations bill to fund TSA, Coast Guard and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, and some feel disappointed he hasn’t done more to help.

Trump has been more focused on reaching a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies normally travel to reach markets.

Senators voted Thursday to instruct the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee to begin drafting a bill that would spend between $70 billion and $80 billion over three and a half years on ICE and Border Patrol.

Each committee received an instruction to produce legislation not costing more than $70 billion and could produce combined legislation spending as much as $140 billion, but they are expected to come well below that number.

Another concerning development for GOP senators is that some House conservatives want to expand the scope of the reconciliation package in hopes of enacting more of Trump’s legislative priorities.

House conservatives are grumbling the Senate proposal to just fund ICE and Border Patrol for three and a half years under budget reconciliation isn’t ambitious enough.

“This will probably be the last reconciliation we do before the end of the year. We got the break coming up, and it’s just we got to address — we got to put more to it than just this,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another prominent House conservative, said: “We ought to be doing more.”

“I think it’s fake news that we’ll get a reconciliation 3.0,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to have the coalition to do that. And if you walk away from something broader right now, you’re walking away from something broader, and I think that’s a mistake.”

Thune, however, is leaning on House GOP leaders to pass the same narrowly focused budget resolution that passed the Senate, warning that otherwise ICE and Border Patrol funding could be delayed for weeks longer.

Thune warned that making changes to the budget will “prolong this process” and potentially trigger a messy Senate debate over the tax cuts enacted last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Democrats want to reverse.

He warned that involving the Senate Finance Committee in the budget debate would significantly complicate passage of ICE and Border Patrol funding.

“If they widen it to include anything that falls within the Finance Committee’s jurisdiction, as I’ve said before, then everything’s on the table, including undoing some of the stuff we did last summer,” he said. “Hopefully the White House will get engaged in trying to make sure we get the budget resolution done.”

Adding tax-related provisions to the budget resolution would give Democrats a chance to wipe out elements of Trump’s signature tax law, with amendments needing only a simple majority to pass — something they didn’t have the opportunity to do during this week’s budget debate.

Democratic amendments directing the budget reconciliation package to lower out-of-pocket health care costs, reverse cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and to reduce prescription drug prices needed 60 votes to succeed Wednesday night and consistently fell well short of that threshold.

The Senate would have to approve any changes the House makes to the budget resolution before it can move forward on a reconciliation package that is protected from a Democratic filibuster. That means if the House changes their budget resolution, the Senate would have to hold another late-night marathon series of votes to pass a new budget — and there’s no guarantee there are enough GOP votes in the Senate to do that.

Emily Brooks and Sudiksha Kochi contributed.

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