That’s what Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, a Senate Republican, said on “Washington Watch” Friday.
The Senate, in the early hours of Friday morning, passed a bill that would fund most government agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and end the ongoing shutdown.
But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were not funded in the Senate bill, and it failed when sent back to the lower chamber. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the Senate bill a “joke.”
Instead, the House passed its own short-term funding bill.
Prior to their bill’s passage, Ron Johnson told show host Jody Hice that senators had received an email from representatives of the American Federation of Government Employees, the Teamsters Union.
“The president of one of their regions said he had people coming to him asking if their life insurance policy covered suicide. You’ve got to take that seriously,” Johnson said.
Ron Johnson is calling on House members to realize that another budget reconciliation package — which would pass ICE and CBP funding with just 51 votes — is the only way out of the current mess short of a drastic measure such as removing the filibuster, which allows the Senate minority party to hold up legislation.
The senator said he would support removal of the filibuster but sees that as a last resort.
Democrats are demanding reforms to ICE enforcement practices following high-profile incidents, including the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Both of them fatally engaged ICE officers during an immigration operation in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Democrats are insisting on:
- Requiring judicial warrants for arrests
- Banning ICE agents from wearing masks – even though the safety of ICE agents and their families has been threatened by an 8,000% increase in death threats, DHS officials say
- Mandating body cameras and independent oversight
- Ending raids at schools and hospitals
Other agencies – most notably Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers at airports – have been caught in the middle of the debate leading to long lines and hours-long delays for Americans trying to pass security and board flights.
President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order directing new DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin to immediately pay the approximately 61,000 TSA agents who had gone without pay for more than a month.
“These are real people struggling to get by, and Democrats are playing these political games. So, at some point, (Senate) Republicans said, ‘okay, we'll accept what we can get.’ The good news is ICE and CBP were funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill for a period of time, so we have a way to cure this,” Ron Johnson said.
Indeed, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed through budget reconciliation, included $170.7 billion for immigration and border enforcement with most funds available through 2029.
But a budget reconciliation package is not that easy, says Rep. Glenn Grothman, Johnson’s Wisconsin Republican counterpart in the House.
“The problem is we have a very slim majority in the House of Representatives, and there is no guarantee that we can put together any package that will only cause us to lose two voters. Therefore, we feel it would be reckless not to pass a bill that is fully funding both ICE and Border Patrol right now,” Grothman told Hice.
Trump’s executive order to pay TSA agents is a double-edged sword, Grothman says.
It will get paychecks to hard-working agents, but it removes the public push for Congress to get something done.
“I think that of all the things that Homeland Security does, (airport efficiency is) the one thing that has to get done and the people care about,” Grothman said.
Now that the pressure will be removed from TSA agents “the public does not feel the sense of necessity, and we may just go on for a while without other parts of (DHS) being funded,” he said.
Johnson to GOP: ‘Toughen up’
Ron Johnson says Republicans need to toughen up and use their small majorities in both chambers. The GOP has 53 seats in the 100-seat Senate. Republicans have 218 seats to Democrats’ 214 in the House.
If the Senate had the votes to break the Democrats’ filibuster it would have already passed a bill funding ICE and CBP, he said.
“We would have done that weeks ago, but it’s not going to pass,” he said.
Short of nuking the filibuster, reconciliation is the only option, he said.
“I'm calling it a reconciliation appropriations process because I don't think Democrats are going to play ball and fund government through the normal appropriation process prior to Sept. 30,” Johnson said.
