Senate Begins Vote-a-Rama on Narrow Reconciliation Instructions

On Tuesday April 21, the Senate voted to begin debate on a narrow budget resolution by a vote of 52-46, triggering the statutorily required 50 hours of debate. The resolution provides reconciliation instructions to the House Judiciary Committee, House Homeland Security Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to provide $70 billion in funding through fiscal year (FY) 2035 for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The committees must respectively submit their recommendations to the House and Senate Budget Committee by May 15, in alignment with President Trump’s June 1 deadline.

The release of the budget resolution follows stalled negotiations over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for FY 2026. In response, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) issued a joint statement in early April outlining a two-track strategy to fund DHS through both the appropriations process and budget reconciliation. Under this approach, House Republicans will ultimately pass the Senate’s bipartisan appropriations bill to fund DHS, excluding ICE and CBP, while leveraging the budget reconciliation process to fund those two agencies without Democratic support.

Once the the 50 hours for debate expire, the Senate will proceed to the amendment portion of the budget resolution process, commonly known as a “vote-a-rama.” During this phase, the rules allow senators to propose modifications to the resolution until their list, or their will to continue, is exhausted. Once amendment votes are completed, which is expected to occur sometime Thursday, the Senate will pass the budget resolution. 

Please click here to access Brownstein’s vote-a-rama tracker, which contains a running list of filed amendments and will be updated in real time as amendments are considered on the floor.

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