ICE and War Funding Can Now Become the Latest Excuse To Gut the Social Safety Net

Republicans don’t need to gut the social safety net again in order to pass Trump’s latest series of priorities. But that’s not what they’ll tell you. GOP will attempt to push SAVE America Act and war funding into new Reconciliation Bill.

By Emine Yücel, Talking Points Memo

Congressional Republicans have been musing about the possibility of a second reconciliation package for some time now. The conversations picked up recently after Senate Republicans tried to convince President Donald Trump to drop his objections on a possible Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding deal, promising the president that they will pass the SAVE America Act through the reconciliation process — as a way to circumvent the filibuster.

So far, Republicans have said they want to include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — and possibly even all of DHS — the Department of Defense (DoD) and Trump’s war in Iran in a new reconciliation package. There is also talk of trying to cram the SAVE America Act, or parts of it, into a potential reconciliation package, in order to appease Trump and far-right supporters of the voter suppression bill — though some are not convinced that is possible. Including the bill that requires documentary proof of citizenship in reconciliation will be a tall order as every single provision going into a reconciliation bill must be directly related to the budget and has to comply with strict budget rules.

The upper chamber has been debating the bill on the Senate floor for the past couple of weeks, with no hope of passing it without the help of reconciliation.

Though discussions are still in early stages, so far, the list of public GOP priorities all require more spending. And Republicans are saying that their second reconciliation bill will also have to include social safety net cuts in order to offset the cost of those priorities — just like they did in the 2025 reconciliation package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), that enacted historic and devastating cuts to popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“We should do what we did in SNAP and Medicaid on the other 78 means-tested welfare programs at a cost of $1.5 trillion,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) said in an interview with CNBC on Friday. “If we did that, we could offset anything that we want to do that is a national priority, especially including supporting our troops in a time of conflict.”