Sen. Rand Paul's call to cut the Trump administration's request on border security spending for the president's "big, beautiful bill" has left him on the sidelines for negotiations on the megabill, even while, as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he would technically be in charge.
Instead, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who chairs the chamber's Budget Committee, said this week he's the lead negotiator in the talks on the border part of the budget, adding that he offered himself to the administration to be the pointman on the border security parts of the bill, reported Politico on Friday.
"Senator Paul usually votes 'no' and blames everybody else for not being pure enough," said Graham in the interview. "As chairman, you … don't have that luxury sometimes. You have to do things as chairman [that] you wouldn't have to do as a rank-and-file member.
"Senator Paul's reducing the amount [for border security] didn't withstand scrutiny," he continued, calling the Kentucky Republican's analysis "shallow."
Last week, Graham and Paul released vastly different competing proposals on border security, with Graham calling for full funding and Paul pushing for far less funding.
Graham's draft text allocated about $46.5 billion for the border wall and surrounding infrastructure, which is in line with the version of the bill passed in the House.
His plan also includes $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detentions and $10 billion to reimburse states for border security costs, as well as other new funding related to the border.
Paul's plan, though, calls for allocating $6.5 billion for border immigration efforts and freeing $2.5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and checkpoints, in comparison to $5 billion in the House version of the bill.
Graham said that he and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., asked White House adviser Stephen Miller, the architect behind Trump's immigration platform, to contest Paul's analysis.
He added that Paul didn't attend the briefing or speak with him about the differences in their budget plans.
Paul, who has made it clear that he is not planning to vote for the tax and spending bill, calling its tax cuts "wimpy," has been sidelined on the measure's government affairs provisions as well, Politico reported.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has voiced doubts about the megabill, said he does support the White House's border security funding request, after he heard directly from Miller.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson did not directly comment on Paul being excluded from the talks, but said the administration is "profoundly grateful" for the "excellent work" being done by Graham and the Budget committee on the draft text for the Homeland Security part of the megabill.
Paul, when asked about the other lawmakers' concerns that he is working alone on plans for the bill, stressed that there have been no committee votes on what the draft measures would contain, and said that "all of the drafts were done by the chairman of each committee."
He added that he thinks some of his proposals that are not related to border security will become part of the final bill, and he has taken part in talks with the Senate parliamentarian about provisions that would be germane to the budget reconciliation process that Republicans are seeking to pass the bill.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.