Draft:Secure America Act

The Secure America Act is a proposed budget reconciliation bill in the 119th United States Congress.

Budget reconciliation is a special parliamentary procedure of the United States Congress set up to expedite the passage of certain federal budget legislation in the Senate. The procedure overrides the Senate's filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority for passage. Bills described as reconciliation bills can pass the Senate by a simple majority of 51 votes or 50 votes plus the vice president's as the tie-breaker. However, not all bills can be reconciliation bills. Policy changes in reconciliation bills that are extraneous to the budget are limited by the Byrd rule, which also prohibits reconciliation bills from increasing the federal deficit after a ten-year period or making changes to Social Security.

In order to begin the reconciliation process, each house of Congress must pass identical budget resolutions that contain reconciliation instructions

The 2024 United States elections resulted in the Republican Party having control in all three legislative chambers, the House (220–215), the Senate (53–47), and the presidency. However, because appropriation legislation can still be fillibustered in the Senate, 60 votes are required to pass government funding in that body.

At the beginning of the 2026 fiscal year, on October 1, 2025, the United States federal government shut down because a continuing resolution to keep the government open failed to pass the Senate. The shutdown would end on November 12, 2025, after Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans reached an agreement to fund the government until the end of January.

The House and Senate successfully passed appropriations bills for Interior and Environment; Commerce, Justice, and science (including NASA and the National Science Foundation); and Energy and water development activities of the Army Corps of Engineers and Department of the Interior in January 2026. Republicans and Democrats also reached an agreement in January for the remainder of the appropriations, which passed in the House.

However, following the killing of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on January 24, 2026, Democrats in the Senate announced they would no longer support the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bill, which funds CBP. Instead, Senators reached an agreement to separate the DHS funding bill, and pass a package containing the other unpassed reconcillation bills plus a two-week continuing resolution for DHS. The House passed this agreement on February 3, which technically resulted in a government shutdown as the previous continuing resolution only included funding until midnight on January 31.

Republicans and Democrats were unable to reach an agreement for DHS funding during the two week continuing resoution. As a result, funding for DHS ran out at midnight on February 14, resulting in a third government shutdown. On March 26, 2026, Senate Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement to fund DHS except for ICE and the Border Patrol, intending to fund those through a reconciliation bill. However, House Republicans refused to pass this agreement until April 30.

The budget framework passed in the Senate through a 50–48 vote on April 23, 2026. Moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and fiscal conservative Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats in voting against the resolution. The resolution instructed the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee to create a bill to fully fund ICE and Border Patrol for the next 3.5 years that does not add more than $70 billion to the deficit over 10 years.^[1]

The same budget framework passed in the House on April 29, 2026 in a party line 215–211–1 vote, with Independent Kevin Kiley of California (a member of the House Republican Conference, voting present.^[2]