On June 3, the U.S. Senate voted 53-46 to bring the current version of the FY2027 budget reconciliation bill to the chamber’s floor for debate, two days after the original deadline that President Trump (R) gave lawmakers to deliver the bill to his desk. Lawmakers have referred to the package as reconciliation 2.0, after Trump signed a prior reconciliation bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in 2025.
The bill’s progress stalled both due to the Senate Parliamentarian’s ruling that certain provision related to funds for the White House ballroom did not comply with the Senate’s Byrd Rule, and because of disagreements about funding of the anti-weaponization fund, a proposed $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who said they were unfairly investigated or prosecuted by the Biden-era Justice Department — including January 6 defendants. No draft of the budget reconciliation legislation has included funding for the anti-weaponization fund, but debate about the proposal became enmeshed in negotiations over the reconciliation package.
Two U.S. Senate committees released the first version of a proposed budget reconciliation spending package on May 4. It mostly included funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and increased the deficit by $72 billion over the following decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The Senate committees that released draft legislation are the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Their proposed reconciliation spending package included nearly $72 billion in funding, including $38.2 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), between $22 and $26 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, $1.5 billion for the Justice Department, and $1 billion for the Secret Service.
About the bill, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington (R) said, “Reconciliation 2.0 [is] the most powerful and potent legislative tool in the toolbox for us to fix what's broken, to clean up this mess, and to give our fellow Americans a safer, stronger, more prosperous and more affordable country.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) said, “Republicans are on a different planet than American families. Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom.”
Process going forward
The reconciliation bill will now be debated on the floor of both the House and the Senate. After and during debate, amendments can be proposed and points of order seeking removal of provisions can be raised under The Byrd Rule. Click one of the links below for more information on this topic:
To complete the reconciliation process, both chambers need to pass identical reconciliation packages by a simple majority. Debate is limited in the Senate, preventing filibusters. After the budget reconciliation bill passes both chambers, it is sent to the president to be signed or vetoed.
Budget reconciliation bill 3.0?
The budget reconciliation process and resulting legislation packages originate with budget resolutions. Since there is generally only one budget resolution per fiscal year, this means that in most cases, there can only be one reconciliation process per fiscal year. The Senate Parliamentarian has advised, however, that reconciliation could be conducted more than once for the same fiscal year if Congress passed a revised budget resolution due to changed economic conditions or an emergency and the revised budget resolution also called for reconciliation.
House Republicans have indicated that they are considering another reconciliation package for FY2027 focused on defense spending and changes to entitlement and social programs. About the contents of a third reconciliation package, Rep. Arrington said: “we need to support our troops, give them the resources they need to finish the fight and come home safely and successfully... Then we need to declare war on fraud in this country in the people's government because hundreds of billions of dollars are leaking like a sieve out of the many, many programs.”
On June 3, after meeting with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R) said: ”We’ve had a working group for reconciliation 3.0 that I’ve been involved in for probably close to two months now, and we’ve had some very productive conversations… Dr. Oz has identified areas of waste… that could potentially go over $100 billion of stolen money and we want to help him get that money back to the taxpayer.”