Name: WSJ Opinion: Congress Gets Serious About Reopening DHS--and Reconciliation 2.0
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T13:50:00Z
Duration: 24 min 36 s

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There’s chaos at American airports thanks to a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, but the Senate is finally getting serious about a deal. On this episode of All Things, Kim Strassel goes inside the negotiations with the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Rules, Rep. Virginia Foxx. What's likely to be in a DHS bill, what might the GOP include in reconciliation, and what are the prospects for Donald Trump's expected $200 billion budget request for the Iran war? Photo: Chris Arbisi

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There’s chaos at American airports thanks to a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, but the Senate is finally getting serious about a deal. On this episode of All Things, Kim Strassel goes inside the negotiations with the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Rules, Rep. Virginia Foxx. What's likely to be in a DHS bill, what might the GOP include in reconciliation, and what are the prospects for Donald Trump's expected $200 billion budget request for the Iran war?

WSJ Opinion: Congress Gets Serious About Reopening DHS--and Reconciliation 2.0 

Continued chaos at airports thanks to the DHS shutdown, talk of a new reconciliation bill, housing legislation, and questions of how to deal with government fraud. Congress is juggling a lot right now, but what, if anything, is about to get done?

Narrator: From the Opinion pages of "The Wall Street Journal," this is "All Things with Kim Strassel."

Welcome to "All Things with Kim Strassel," and joining me this week to give us all the inside skinny is a veteran of the congressional wars, a member that I have had the privilege of knowing a long time now, North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx, who is also chair of the all-important Rules Committee. Welcome, Congresswoman. Thank you so much for taking some time for us this week.

Oh, Kim, I'm a great admirer of yours, and so I'm happy to do it.

Well, thanks. We're just gonna start right off here. We are now, at this point, 30 days plus into this DHS shutdown. There's a total mess at airports in particular, where TSA officials are now calling out in droves, causing long wait lines. But I would also note, even though it hasn't got as much attention, that we've had some attacks on the homeland, including an Iran-backed hacker group that attacked a major medical company in the US, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is within DHS and shut down right now. Congress is meant to be headed out of town at the end of this week for a two-week recess. If this situation isn't settled, by the time Congress comes back, DHS will have been without funding for 60 days. There's talk of a deal in the Senate. What are you hearing about that deal? What's being discussed, and what do you think the chances are that this gets opened?

Well, I'll give you a little scoop, I guess. Rules is meeting this afternoon at four o'clock, and I keep getting messages back and forth. We have two bills related to funding DHS. What I've been told as the chair of the Rules Committee, that we may have to switch what we're doing in Rules this afternoon, if, indeed, a deal comes together in the Senate today. And if it doesn't come together by four o'clock when we meet, we, of course, can go into session again whenever something does happen in the Senate. So there is a lot of chatter that we might have a deal coming through with the Senate.

It sounds as though that deal is centered on the notion of funding most of DHS other than potentially enforcement and removal operations. Does that sound like a good plan to you if it means that things will get opened up again?

Well, yes. And you mentioned the Cybersecurity Agency. As I counted, and I may not have counted correctly, there are 16 agencies that are being affected, at least 16 agencies being affected other than, other than customs and enforcement. And so we need to get those agencies funded. And it is, I got a letter yesterday. Kim, I answer my own mail, which I think is great for me. I got a letter yesterday from a man saying, "Oh, you're not funding the Coast Guard." But the Coast Guard is being funded. The military people are funded. It's the civilians who work for the Coast Guard who aren't funded. So I do think some things are being funded that the public doesn't understand, like the Coast Guard, but there are other things, like cybersecurity, that needs to be being funded. And FEMA employees and others like that that are not being funded, and that puts the nation at risk.

Yeah, I mean, this has been kind of stunning to me because, I mean, you think about the name of that agency, the Department of Homeland Security. We're currently in an active strike operation against Iran. You would think that we would, of all agencies, want this one to be on high alert. Let me ask you this. Why do you think the deal is happening now? Do you think it's because Democrats are feeling some fallout political fallout here from what's happening? Or is it just because everyone wants to go on recess at the end of the week?

Well, I do think the Democrats and the Republicans both are getting some pressure. Again, from reading my mail, I'm getting mail from people saying, "Just give in. Give in to the Democrats." But that's not a lot that are saying that. It's a small group of people, but there are people like that. But I do think, I think there's an interest on the part of some in the Senate to settle this, and my understanding is that Katie Britt is leading the charge. And I think, Kim, you know, that women, I think, are much more likely to look for a way to solve a problem like this than the men do. And I think if you look at the way this has been done before, I think Jeanne Shaheen was very involved on the last one. And I think the women generally will work to try to solve things.

Yes, if only we were in charge of everything. We agree on that. So part of that discussion, my understanding if there is a deal, is it has revived conversation of doing a second reconciliation bill, following the one last year that you and Congress passed, you Republicans in Congress passed to save the nation from those tax hikes. And my understanding is that the idea here would be that you'd use that reconciliation bill to fund the immigration enforcement piece that Democrats are refusing to fund now, and maybe potentially somehow address some portions of the SAVE America Act, which is also being debated in the Senate at the moment. That's this election bill that the president wants to require voter ID. I've been a big fan of the notion of another reconciliation bill, but I believe that there's been a chunk of House members, including House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, who didn't think it would work. What do you think the prospects of another reconciliation bill this year are?

Well, Senator Kennedy said Saturday night on Trey Gowdy's show that that's what he would do. That he would pass the funding for these other agencies other than border enforcement, border security enforcement, and then the next day come in and do a reconciliation bill. We have to have a budget resolution before a reconciliation bill can be passed. So things sound sometimes simple, but they're not so simple. We can do two more reconciliation bills in this session of Congress. It's possible to do that. President Biden did three in one session. My understanding in reading something, I think probably a "Wall Street Journal" article, that two of those passed and one failed. And honestly, I can't remember how that was done. But we could do another reconciliation for just those items, but the speaker really wants to do a larger reconciliation bill. I have heard Chairman Smith say, "It's gonna be very difficult to do." The chairman of the Budget Committee, Arrington, is champing at the bit to do it. So there is some mixture. However, at the leadership retreat that we had, I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school. At the leadership retreat we had, all of us, it was the chairman and the elected leadership, we all committed to the speaker to work on another Reconciliation 2.0, we call it. So everybody's committed to that. Chairman Smith was there. I didn't hear him say no. I didn't listen for him to say yes, but we at the leadership table, and my understanding is that later at the retreat for the other members, which I was not able to attend, they pledged again to do Reconciliation 2.0. Now, here's the deal. The reconciliation we did last July, we worked on for a year and a half. It is not easy to do reconciliation. You have to get everybody to agree. And so this, we, again, as soon as we got in the majority in 2025, well, even while we were in the minority, we worked on it. So '22, '23, '24, '25, we worked on it, and it took a while. It really did take a while to get it put together, but it came together in what we call the Working Families Tax Cut Act, which, of course, was sold as the One Big, Beautiful Bill. So it's not easy to do, but it can be done, and we can do two more. But before reconciliation is done, as I understand it, you have to have a budget bill.

Yeah, no, absolutely. But let's talk about that a little bit about what, because I find this the most fascinating question of this coming Congress, is will there be another reconciliation bill? And given what you said, the very narrow majority you all now have in the House and the difficulty of making that work. And that's why I'd love to get your thoughts on, therefore, what you think the kind of outer limits of that bill could be, what might be up for grabs if you were to go down that road, because obviously, as just mentioned, the Senate's now talking about a kind of small thing, funding again these enforcement and removal operations that would not be part of any deal to reopen DHS. Maybe something from the SAVE America Act, if that passed Senate reconciliation rules, which could be tough. But now there's a discussion about Iran funding, additional money to resupply our stocks after these strikes, you know, a potential $200 billion bill. There's been a lot of talk about doing more in terms of reforming waste and fraud in entitlement programs. Healthcare changes. What do you think a bill like this could bear?

All of those things. And the Republican Study Committee has put out, it's on red paper. The cover's red, so I can't say it's a white paper, but they've put out a long list of things that could be in Reconciliation 2.0. So yes, healthcare, I think, is a, we want very much to do something in healthcare. I don't know that there's anything left in the farm bill. I'm not sure about transportation, but the other things that you mentioned, yes. You mentioned one thing that I realized is gonna be very difficult. Oh, the SAVE Act. Sorry. The SAVE Act, for anything we put in reconciliation again, the whole idea is that you're, it's gotta be tied to spending some way or another. It has to have a budget connection or an appropriations connection. So I'm not sure how that could get done. I have not seen that presented in a way that it could go into a reconciliation bill. You know, we have the Senate parliamentarian who's pretty tough on these issues, and we have to make sure that it will pass what's called as the Byrd Rule. And I think, you know, a lot of these terms get thrown around and people don't understand what they mean, but Senator Byrd got a bill passed a long time ago saying if it doesn't have something to do with appropriations, then it can't be in a reconciliation bill, and it's the Senate parliamentarian's job to enforce that rule.

Here's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that maybe the way that this would be done is it wouldn't be the actual thing that the president would want at the moment, which is a national standard for voter ID, but rather potentially some financial incentives to encourage states to do voter ID. Is that something that could pass the Byrd Rule?

It sounds like it could. Now, I had my staff look this up recently. I keep hearing that there are 34 states that have some version of voter ID citizenship, but when you get right down to it, it's a small number of states. And I have that list, but I don't know where it is right now, that have all the elements that the president wants in the SAVE Act. But a lot of states have already done this, and frankly, Kim, I don't want the president to hear me say this, but if I were doing this, I would do it state by state since you have states who already have some elements. And when people come to me and want national or federal legislation, I had, one time, some women come to me and said, "47 states already do this. We need you to pass a bill that requires these other three states to do it." It's a lot easier to pass legislation at the state level than it is at the federal level. And so I always tell people, "If the states are already doing it, let's pursue the state way of doing it." It just is easier.

Yeah, it's not just easier, but I mean, from my perspective, it's also, I think, more in keeping with conservative principles. We believe in states' rights, and I get very concerned about setting the precedent of imposing national voting standards because we both know that that's exactly what Democrats want to do when they get back in power, and they wanna make everyone have to vote like California. And I would rather not give them the roadmap for doing that and the kind of to go forward with that. Let me ask-

Let me add, Kim, I agree with you on that. I'm very keen on that. And we talk about that a lot. If we do something, when somebody comes to me and says, "We should do this." I said, "Well, then the Democrats can do the opposite." If we set the precedent for that, they'll come in and do the opposite, and you don't want that.

Yeah, no, I could not agree more. And there's been a lot of bad precedent-setting over the past decade in D.C., so we should stop it. But what else should the GOP be trying to do this year? Because, and please don't take this the wrong way, but not much has happened so far in 2026. I mean, the first part of the year was taken up with finishing some of these government funding bills that in theory actually should have been done at the end of September last year. I think there was a national defense authorization, but there hasn't been much else since then. And, I mean, you mentioned reconciliation, but what else might we expect from Congress this year?

Well, I will make a defense for us last year on that reconciliation bill. By getting the tax cuts bill, that was one of the major issues we wanted to get done, save those. And so when you can put a lot in one bill, you're getting a lot done. We codified a lot of executive orders in that bill, and so in some ways, you know, we did a lot, but you're right, there's more to do. We have the National Defense Authorization Act to do again. The transportation bill will need to be done. I would like to see us really hone in on healthcare. I'm a big believer in transparency. I know "The Journal" writes some great editorials about what we need to be doing in healthcare. I wrote the bill along with Bobby Scott. It was a very bipartisan bill on transparency, the No Surprises Act. Well, it's not being implemented properly by the administrations. It wasn't under Biden. We still haven't broken that in the Trump administration. So I think we have got to address the issue of healthcare costs. I would love to see us do more, a lot more, as you mentioned, in regulatory reform, in going after waste, fraud, and abuse. You know, everybody has known there was waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. It's in Medicare. Anytime you put out a dollar of money from the federal government, particularly, you're gonna see an enormous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse. The states will game the system. They did it for years with Medicaid till Congress finally closed the loophole on that. I can't remember. DSH, it was called the DSH Program, I think, where the states were getting extra money from Medicaid that they didn't deserve. So again, it just seems like people feel very compelled to steal the federal taxpayer dollars. And we don't do a good job of monitoring them. We need to do much, much more to require accountability. You know, I tell everybody, particularly when I was chair of the education committee, my middle initial is A. It used to stand for Ann, but now it stands for accountability. I think we need to do more to dismantle the Department of Education. That's still a ticklish issue. I saw something go across the screen on my TV today about the student loans being transferred, perhaps from the Department of Education. We need to do more in that area. We need to clean up the student loan business. The taxpayers are on the hook for $1.7 trillion right now. But, Kim, I'm one of these people that's absolutely convinced we could reduce the rate, reduce the debt, and get us toward a balanced budget if we could simply get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse and get the federal government out of the things it's not supposed to be in. Healthcare being one of those, although I don't think you're gonna see Medicare and Medicaid go away, but we can certainly stop the waste, fraud, and abuse there. Don't think you're gonna see the department completely done away with because it's gonna be hard to pass legislation on individual programs, but we can do a lot, and I think those things. Then there's a segment of the farm bill that's left to do. It's, GT Thompson says, about 20% of the farm bill that he'd like to get passed, so there are a lot of things that we need to be working on. And I think you know how it works around here. When you come up to the final couple of weeks of the session, a lot of things get pushed through. Unfortunately, some of that is bad legislation when it's done in a hurry.

This sounds like a great agenda, and I'm gonna hope that your view holds the day there. Just as we begin to wrap this up, I wanted to just step back a little bit to another headline. How concerned are you personally about the strikes in Iran bleeding back into the US economy, given what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz?

I think it's very troubling, and I have never invested in the stock market, but my husband has a little bit over the years, and I've always told him that's the most emotional group of men I've ever seen in my life. And if they accuse women of being emotional, it's the men in the stock market who are so emotional. I do think it is having an impact on the price of oil and on other things. And we obviously wanna get back to 2.49 a gallon of gas or even less than that. There were places, you know, not long ago the president was touting, where gas was $1.99 a gallon. You know, I pump my own gas on weekends when I'm home and drive around, so I know it makes a major impact. The price of groceries will go up. The price of everything goes up when gas is up. And so we need to do something about it. I'm hoping and praying that what the president is saying right now, that they're close to a deal, that they will be close to a deal. But I also know that the people in Iran are fragmented, what should be known as leadership is fragmented, and that it's gonna be very difficult to make a deal with one group and have the other groups cede to that because they don't have a unified country right now, and that's gonna be very difficult. But, you know, the president has proven people wrong many times, the speaker has proven people wrong many times. They both have faith in what they're doing, and I'm gonna put my bets on them that we're gonna solve some of these issues that we're facing and get this country back on the right track from this little diversion that we have with Iran. And I wanna say that I think President Trump did the right thing by taking out the nuclear capabilities of Iran. Seven presidents have said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, but none of them would do anything. President Obama gave them money so they could increase what they were doing, and that was a tragedy, in my opinion. So at least President Trump has stopped them from getting a nuclear weapon. Now, how can we degrade the people in charge, I'll call them that, to the point where the Iranian people can take back over their country? It's a wonderful country full of so much promise. I mean, the Persians were war-like people a long time ago, but in recent history, they were not. And it would be nice if they could get their country back.

I couldn't agree more, and I also agree it's been really wonderful to see this administration reestablish the idea of deterrence, something that we have not had in a long time. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, we wanna thank you for joining us this week. We also wanna thank our listeners. If you liked the show, you can hit the subscribe button. We are here every week, and if you would like to write to us, you can at atkim@wsj.com.

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