Senate GOP readying party-line funding bill despite divisions, anger at the House

By Fox News · Fox News

Senate Republicans hope to nail down the first step of their party-line funding package for immigration operations this week, but other legislative obstacles and divisions could slow the process. Republicans and President Donald Trump are in agreement that the partisan budget reconciliation process is the key to bypassing Democrats’ blockade of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol funding. But in order to hit that fast-approaching deadline, Senate Republicans largely want to keep the package as narrowly tailored as possible to avoid any hiccups in the process. The main plan from Republican leadership is to fund immigration operations for the next three years with the current reconciliation package and look to a future bill as a later landing spot for other issues. SENATE REPUBLICANS RACE TO FUND ICE, CBP WITHOUT DEMOCRATS AS SHUTDOWN DRAGS Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will kick off the process with a budget resolution that will act as the guiding document for the GOP as they push forward into reconciliation. That resolution will tee up the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as the main panels running the process. "I hope we can get moving on it as early as next week," Graham said before lawmakers left Washington, D.C., for the weekend. Despite keeping the resolution, in theory, as slim as possible, other lawmakers in the upper chamber and in the House want more added to the package. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow last week that he was making the case that Republicans should "go big" on reconciliation. Cruz said he wants a decade of funding for ICE and Border Patrol and, more broadly, tax cuts and affordability measures. SENATE GOP VOWS TO ‘GO IT ALONE’ ON ICE FUNDING AS DEMS DOUBLE DOWN ON SHUTDOWN "Right now, leadership’s plan is to have the skinny, anorexic bill that just has funding for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. I think that is short-minded, short…