Republicans Pass $70 Billion Bill Funding ICE and CBP

Speaker Mike Johnson (Reuters)
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy Tuesday! It's another primary election day, with a closely watched Senate contest in Maine and other races in South Carolina, Nevada and North Dakota. Here's what else you should know this evening.

Republicans Pass $70 Billion Bill Funding ICE and CBP

The House on Tuesday narrowly passed Republicans' nearly $70 billion budget reconciliation package to fund immigration enforcement agencies through fiscal year 2029.

The 214-212 vote was as close as it could be. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who caucuses with Republicans, joined with all Democrats in voting no.

The package now heads to President Trump's desk. It provides $38.5 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection and an extra $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. That money is in addition to the more than $140 billion Republicans provided ICE and CBP in their party-line megabill last year.

A long and winding road: Tuesday's vote caps a monthslong fight over funding for ICE and CBP that involved a record 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. Democrats balked at funding the department without reforms after the Trump administration's immigration crackdown led to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens, in Minneapolis. Democrats demanded a series of changes, most notably a requirement that federal agents wear body cameras and get judicial warrants before property searches, but those negotiations broke down, leaving the two sides mired in a shutdown standoff.

"We believe that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not give ICE another $70 billion blank check so they can unleash brutality on American citizens and violently target law-abiding immigrant communities," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday.

In the end, lawmakers agreed to fund most of DHS, ending the shutdown on April 30, but they left out money for ICE and CBP. Republicans set out to fund those agencies via a party-line reconciliation package, which Trump said he wanted done by June 1.

Their plan got delayed by repeated clashes over other Trump administration priorities. A proposed $1 billion for the Secret Service and Trump's White House ballroom ultimately got scrapped. A planned $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund announced by the Justice Department met with bipartisan opposition, but a push by some lawmakers to block or limit that fund as part of the reconciliation bill failed.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole said Tuesday that he backed the reconciliation bill but lamented the weakening of the normal appropriations process and the need to use budget reconciliation in this instance to fund ICE and CBP.

"I hope the months-long charade that led us to this moment serves as a reminder that no partisan fixation is worth shutting down the government, abandoning constitutional responsibilities, and forcing Congress into extraordinary measures simply to perform its most basic duties," he said in a statement that took aim at Senate Democrats and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Why it matters: After weeks of infighting and delays, Republicans have succeeded in delivering funding for ICE and CBP beyond the end of Trump's term, ensuring that those agencies won't face further shutdown threats - and they did so without giving in to many of Democrats' demands for reforms to the administration's immigration policies and enforcement tactics, though DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told lawmakers that agents will now undergo more extensive training and are seeking judicial warrants before entering private homes.

The bottom line: The bill's passage ends the annual appropriations process for the fiscal year that began back in October, more than eight months ago. Lawmakers are already working on funding bills for fiscal year 2027 - and Republicans are already eyeing plans for a third budget reconciliation bill that many doubt they will be able to pass.

Social Security Trust Fund Depletion Date Moved Up to 2032

The main Social Security trust fund will run dry in late 2032, resulting in a 22% reduction in benefits unless Congress acts to shore up the program's finances, according to the latest projections from the program's trustees. That means that more than 70 million people could see a significant reduction in their retirement incomes in just six years.

The trustees' annual report, released Tuesday, moves the depletion date of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund up by one quarter from last year's projections to the fourth quarter of 2032. The separate, smaller Disability Insurance Trust Fund is projected to remain in the black for at least the next 75 years.

If the reserves of the two trust funds were combined, the resulting fund would run dry in the third quarter of 2034, and revenues would be sufficient to cover 83% of scheduled benefits. ("The two funds could not actually be combined unless there were a change in the law, but the combined projection of the two funds is frequently used to indicate the overall status of the Social Security program," the trustees' report says.)

What's behind the revisions: The report names several factors driving the new projections. Analysts have lowered the estimated fertility rate from 1.90 children per woman to 1.75, thereby lowering the long-term estimates for the total number of workers, payroll taxes collected and economic growth. Analysts have also cut their projections of the number of immigrants coming to the United States in the future, further weighing on growth estimates.

On the revenue side, the trustees say that the tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that became law last summer will reduce inflows into the Social Security trust funds.

Some key details: Total income for the combined Social Security Trust Funds was $1.45 trillion in 2025. About $1.32 trillion of that total came from payroll taxes, $58 billion came from income taxation of benefits paid and $69 billion came from interest. The combined trust fund reserves earned an interest rate of 2.6%.

Social Security paid out $1.60 trillion in 2025, with roughly 70 million beneficiaries at the end of the year. An estimated 185 million people paid payroll taxes.

The Social Security program cost $7 billion to run in 2025 - or about 0.4% of total expenditures.

Calls for reform: Frank J. Bisignano, the commissioner of Social Security, noted that Congress has work to do to stabilize the program. "To protect the promise of Social Security, it is important for lawmakers and the Social Security Administration to work together to ensure the trust funds continue to provide financial stability now and for future generations," he said.

Myechia Minter-Jordan, chief executive of AARP, called on lawmakers to work together on the problem. "This should be a wake-up call: Congress needs to act," she said. "Americans have worked hard and paid into Social Security their entire lives, and they deserve to count on it when they retire. No family should see any cuts to what they've earned in Social Security."

Medicare Part A weakening: The Medicare trustees - who are the same as the Social Security trustees, though the boards are technically separate - also published their annual report Tuesday. According to those latest projections, the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, known as Medicare Part A, is projected to run dry in the second quarter of 2033, a quarter earlier than previously projected. At that point, revenues would cover an estimated 89% of scheduled benefits.

The Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund, which covers Medicare Parts B and D, faces no shortfalls. Unlike the other trust funds, its financing is adjusted each year to cover all required payments.

Numbers of the Day

519: The Trump administration has warned 519 hospitals across the country that they must provide more information on their prices or face fines, the Associated Press reports. The AP's Josh Boak obtained a list of hospitals that have gotten warning letters or requests to submit plans to improve price transparency. The list includes 42 hospitals in Texas, 38 in California, 34 in Indiana and 27 in Louisiana.

"The letters are meant to fix a fundamental problem that patients, employers and insurers might not know ahead of time the cost of blood work, an imaging test or another form of treatment, and as a result pay more than they should have," Boak reports. Failure to comply with the warnings reportedly could result in penalties of up to $2 million a year.

Trump signed an executive order in 2019 that called for hospitals to disclose their prices for common tests and procedures and to inform patients of their out-of-pocket costs in many cases. With healthcare affordability expected to be on voters' minds leading up to this year's midterm elections, Boak reports that an unnamed senior administration official said that Trump plans on tightening price transparency enforcement.

While the Trump administration has made increased price transparency a focus of its efforts to bring down healthcare costs, some experts question the usefulness of such data for patients. Gary Claxton, senior vice president and the director of the program on the healthcare marketplace at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization, told the AP that pricing data is more useful for benefit consultants and others in the sector than for consumers.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday titled "Examining Policies to Increase Health Care Transparency."

38: President Trump has said at least 38 times that a deal with Iran is close to happening, Aaron Blake of CNN reported this morning. Trump made the initial claim on March 23, telling reporters there were "major points of agreement, I would say - almost all points of agreement."

As Blake notes, there is still no deal in place two and a half months later, but Trump has continued to promise that one is coming soon. He told reporters Tuesday that negotiators are "in final throes of what will be a very, very good deal" and that it could come in "two or three days."

The president reportedly still thinks a deal is close despite the U.S. launching retaliatory strikes Tuesday after Iran downed an American Apache helicopter.

Quote of the Day

"I would just suggest that it is taking a terrible risk and creates instability when you're counting on a third reconciliation bill for the bulk of the money rather than doing base funding through the defense appropriations bill."

− Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, cautioning Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink about funding plans for certain programs at a hearing Tuesday on President Trump's budget request.

Trump has asked Congress for $1.15 trillion in base defense funding, with the expectation that about $350 billion more could come via the special budget reconciliation process Republicans have been using to pass key portions of the agenda without Democratic support.

At Tuesday's hearing, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who chairs the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, joined with Collins in cautioning against expecting supplemental defense funding via a third GOP reconciliation bill. "I think it's safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill, so it's really not an option," McConnell said.

Collins said she agreed with McConnell's view.

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