To end shutdown, House leaders need hawks like Rep. Clyde on board

“CBP and ICE would have to be funded first before the others are funded to ensure that they don’t get hung out to dry,” Clyde, R-Athens, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week. “We’re not ever going to hang our law enforcement out to dry.”

Whether House Speaker Mike Johnson takes that approach is to be determined. But there are signs he is slowing down the process in hopes of building consensus.

The Senate on Thursday sent the bill funding all of DHS, except for immigration enforcement, back to the House. It is similar to a proposal that House Republicans rejected last month, and several members told Johnson during a conference call that day that they were unhappy he had decided to go along with the Senate plan.

The House held a brief pro forma session that day, but the Senate’s DHS bill was not mentioned.

Members of the House are not due back in Washington until April 13, when the two-week recess ends. It is possible that no action on the DHS bill will happen until members can participate in a roll-call vote, meaning the shutdown that began Feb. 15 could extend past the two-month mark. It already is the longest in U.S. history.

Reconciliation allows Republicans in the House to pass funding for ICE and Border Patrol using their slim majority, and Democrats can’t block it. But it gives blocs of GOP members additional power to make their demands. Clyde and other members of the House Freedom Caucus told Johnson they want to do the immigration funding bill first to make sure it happens.

But the reconciliation process can take weeks, if not months, because of there are certain steps and rules that must be followed. If it doesn’t happen, the bill could become subject to the filibuster and Democrats could block action.

House Republicans are not only discussing the timeline for moving forward, but there is disagreement on what should be included in the reconciliation bill.

In addition to funding for immigration enforcement, the measure could also include money to replenish weapons and ammunition used by the military in the war with Iran. And some conservatives also want to add in money for grants to states that implement changes to their voting and elections laws.

Clyde said there is a difference between mandatory spending like funding ICE and Border Patrol and supplemental spending that provides additional funding beyond the appropriations process. Since Congress has already signed off on an appropriations bill that funds the Department of Defense through the current fiscal year, he considers money to fund the war in Iran as supplemental spending that must be paid for.

That means any new dollars must be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

“If you don’t pay for it, then it becomes strictly, purely borrowed money, which adds to the national debt and to the deficit,” he said. “I don’t think that’s being fiscally responsible.”

Clyde is a member of the Appropriations and the Budget committees, meaning he will have input on how the reconciliation bill takes shape and what ultimately gets new funding or where cuts could occur. He could provide crucial votes to keep the bill moving forward or, along with other Freedom Caucus members, make it more difficult for a bill to pass by withholding support.

It is unclear what the reconciliation bill would ultimately cover given the different opinions among GOP leaders on how wide-ranging it should be.

But Clyde said he believes that lawmakers can find ways to pay for new spending by looking for “waste, fraud and abuse” across the federal government. For example, he cites his belief that more mass deportations of undocumented immigrants will provide plenty of savings in government welfare programs.

“There’s a lot of ways that we can do that if we really want to get down and do the work, and I think we should,” Clyde said.

The price tag will vary, depending on what is included in the package. Funding ICE and Border Patrol for at least three years would cost $45 billion or more.

Some of the cuts proposed by Republicans could be marketed as attacking “waste, fraud and abuse” but could still cause people to lose access to services. For example, the 2025 reconciliation bill that became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act implements work requirements and other new eligibility standards for Medicaid that are projected to cause millions of people to lose health coverage.

Before the DHS deal, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter said he was equally confident that a reconciliation bill can fund Republicans’ priorities while also finding offsetting cuts that are palatable to voters. Carter, R-St. Simons Island, serves with Clyde on the Budget Committee.

“There’s enough waste, fraud and abuse in the budget where we can find it,” he said. “I’m not concerned about that.”