Sen. Thom Tillis told colleagues he would not support the GOP's $72 billion reconciliation package if it included $1 billion for President Donald Trump's ballroom, putting fresh pressure on a party trying to hold together a narrow Senate majority. His opposition was first reported by Axios and later confirmed by a source familiar to Digital.
The package is meant to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the next three and a half years, and Republicans were briefed last week by Secret Service Director Sean Curran on the security spending folded into it. That funding included $220 million for White House complex hardening, $180 million for a White House screening center for visitors and $600 million for Secret Service training, protection for Trump and other officials, and efforts to counter drones and other aerial incursions.
The administration said those security upgrades would “afford needed protection for the president, his family, and visitors, along with the below-ground, highest-level security functions,” and said the work would include bulletproof glass, drone detection technology, chemical filtration and detection systems, and other national security functions. But the ballroom money became the flashpoint. Senate Democrats pushed Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to remove it, and she ruled that the funding should be stripped from the package.
That ruling matters because budget reconciliation can pass with a simple majority if it stays within the Senate's Byrd Rule, making it one of the few ways Republicans can move a large bill without clearing the 60-vote threshold. Even so, John Thune cannot afford defections in a chamber where the GOP margin is thin, and Tillis joins a small group of Republicans who have expressed unease with the spending, including John Curtis, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Rick Scott.
The fight now is less about whether the ballroom survives than whether the rest of the package can stay intact. With immigration operations and White House security tied to the same bill, Republican leaders need to keep enough senators from breaking ranks to get the measure through, and Tillis has made clear he is willing to walk if the ballroom money returns.
