U.S. senators have been weighing financial matters that include a couple of hot potato issues and wound up deciding that both were too hot to handle right now.
One is whether federal lawmakers could or should institute guardrails on a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” with taxpayer dollars that is part of a settlement between President Donald Trump and the Internal Revenue Service.
Another is a $1 billion package for the “East Wing Modernization Project” to cover security features and an underground bunker complex related to the president’s ballroom project. That funding now seems unlikely to move forward.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., was still considering both matters earlier Thursday afternoon as she spoke with West Virginia reporters.
But a couple of hours after Capito made her comments, the Senate Republican majority delayed a vote on a broader immigration enforcement funding bill, ahead of a weeklong recess. Much of the reasoning appeared to be just how contentious some of the funding issues have been.
The “lawfare” fund and the ballroom security dollars had, potentially, been aspects of a reconciliation package dealing with broader immigration enforcement funding.
House GOP leaders also wound up canceling plans for a Friday vote on the immigration package.
The weaponization fund discussion has been particularly intense, with senators in the Republican majority hearing from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for two hours over lunch.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, told national reporters that Republican senators had “very legitimate questions”
Capito told reporters from West Virginia that she had attended part of that lunch but had to miss part of it because of an overlapping hearing.
“Yeah, I do have questions. I don’t know what an anti-weaponization fund is. I do understand the weaponization that has occurred in the past in terms of overreach by the Department of Justice in certain areas, but there are a lot of questions,” Capito said.
“And there were a lot of questions in the meeting portion that I was in: whether this is something that has been created before, what the parameters are, who’s able to access this. And so the acting attorney general was answering the questions.”
The Anti-Weaponization Fund is a Department of Justice program established to compensate individuals who claim they were victims of political targeting, “lawfare” or government weaponization.
It was created as part of a settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the Internal Revenue Service to end a civil lawsuit over the unauthorized leak of his tax returns. In exchange for the fund’s creation, Trump dropped his pending lawsuit.
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The $1.776 billion program is financed by the federal Judgment Fund and administered by a commission appointed by Trump’s Attorney General.
It’s a court settlement involving the executive branch, but some senators have been looking at ways to impose guardrails such as legislation that would add restrictions to the fund. One route could be adding provision to the reconciliation bill to somehow address concerns.
“I’m not sure what the future is. It looks as though that is going to be difficult for us to pass in the reconciliation bill, but those decisions have not quite been made to my knowledge. They’re probably being made right now,” Capito said, prior to the day’s vote being postponed.
On the ballroom project, a proposal has been floated for $1 billion in security money. Under the Secret Service request, about $220 million would pay for security improvements related to the ballroom. The rest would go for a new screening center for visitors, training and other security measures at the White House.
The money is part of a larger bill to pay for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
“I don’t think that that whole package, the billion dollar number, is is accurate for what I think I would be willing to fund here, which would be portions of whatever the security issues are in that building, the technologies that would be needed, the training that would be needed for the Secret Service,” Capito said.
“You know, the president said that the ballroom concept was going to be privately funded, and, and that is the direction that we think it should go and I think it should go. So, I’m not even sure if there will be any ask in this reconciliation budget at all for this project. Those decisions again are being made right now.”
As it turned out, the decision was to postpone.