BURSTSen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday that a border security bill should be “the first order of business in the Senate Budget Committee."
“Stephen Miller was spot on when he said that the Senate and House should first pass a border security bill through the budget reconciliation process,” Graham said in a post on the social platform X, referring to President-elect Trump’s pick for his deputy chief of staff for policy.
“While I support spending restrictions and tax cuts, my top priority – and the first order of business in the Senate Budget Committee – is to secure a broken border,” the incoming leader of the Budget Committee added. “The bill will be transformational, it will be paid for, and it will go first.”
Graham’s Monday post came in response to an Axios report about comments by Miller in a Fox News appearance the day before. In the appearance, Miller urged congressional Republicans to pass a border funding package featuring a “historic” increase in border patrol agents, funding for military operations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) needs.
Miller said Sunday that immigration control and border security have been discussed by some Republicans “for decades.”
“But with Donald Trump, this is something that is going to happen. It will be the most important and significant … domestic policy achievement in half a century,” he said.
The day after the election, Graham said upon the chance Republicans kept “the House, we will hit the ground running on budget reconciliation — the best vehicle to jump start the economy and help secure the border.”
Under Senate special budget reconciliation rules, the party controlling both the House and Senate can move legislation through the upper chamber by backing it with a simple majority of senators rather than the normal 60 votes needed to pass contentious legislation.