The stopgap funding bill passed by the House on Tuesday contains billions of dollars to assist in President Donald Trump’s mission to secure the U.S. border.
The House passed the measure that will fund the federal government through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which is Sept. 30, by a 217-213 vote — with only one Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, opposed and one Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, in support. The Republican-controlled Senate has until 11:59 p.m. Friday to pass the measure to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The House bill includes $9.9 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $10.6 billion for the Transportation Security Administration, and $10.4 billion for the Coast Guard, all under the Department of Homeland Security’s auspices.
The bill also reportedly slashes $2.5 billion in spending from former President Joe Biden’s efforts to provide visas and green cards through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars from various programs supported by the Biden administration.
A House GOP fact sheet on the bill said the funding prioritizes enforcement efforts for fentanyl and human trafficking, as well as increasing detention beds, including family detention beds that were phased out during the Biden administration.
"[This] provides ICE with close to a $10 billion blank check to continue its ongoing efforts to increase detention beds with no oversight guardrails or assurances that other critical homeland security operations and investigations, such as countering fentanyl and illicit narcotics, combating human trafficking, and other transnational criminal activities are prioritized," the fact sheet stated.
Republicans took heat from members of their base because the funding bill did nothing to reduce overall spending. In fact, Massie said in a video posted on X that bill was "not Trump's agenda" but Biden’s.
Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, told Newsmax on Tuesday that immigration enforcement and border security were among the reasons why it was important to pass the measure and avoid a government shutdown.
"That would hamper a lot of the good work that [Trump is] doing, whether it's what Elon [Musk] is doing in [the Department of Government Efficiency] or just all the different items within this administration: securing the border, sending illegal criminals back to the countries that they came from, those things would be halted if there was a government shutdown," Smith said.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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