Republicans aim to revive Texas wins in sweeping budget package

Peter Cohn, CQ-Roll Call on Jun 25, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Some big legislative priorities for the Texas GOP delegation may have gotten a new lease on life Wednesday as revised text for the Senate budget reconciliation package began to roll out.

Two key committee leaders – Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, himself a Texas Republican – unveiled new language designed to overcome procedural challenges raised by Democrats seeking to make passage of Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget bill as ugly as possible.

Guidance from the Senate parliamentarian that several provisions in earlier iterations of the bill would have to fall out – or be subject to a 60-vote threshold on the floor, a likely death sentence – affected a $10 billion reimbursement fund for states that incurred border security and immigration enforcement costs during the Biden administration.

Other provisions subject to “Byrd rule” violations initially included $250 million to repair a fire-damaged Coast Guard station on South Padre Island, Texas, and $85 million to transfer the retired space shuttle Discovery to Houston from its display at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.

Cruz removed the South Padre Island money from his new text, apparently figuring there was no feasible way to salvage the provision in a way that didn’t look like an earmark — which is frowned on in reconciliation bills.

But Cruz potentially found a creative way to make the shuttle transfer a reality, if the parliamentarian complies. He removed specific references to Johnson Space Center in Houston — which would take ownership of the Discovery — in favor of a more generic NASA “field center … that is involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program” as defined in the 2017 NASA authorization law.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which works with companies like Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida but about half the people working on the program are based at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. — and Johnson Space Center.

Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, earlier this year introduced legislation to direct the shuttle move, and Cornyn and Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, visited Space Center Houston, the visitor complex where the Discovery would be displayed, last Friday.

Cornyn, who is facing a tough primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, pledged to bring the iconic shuttle to Houston. He and and other Texas Republicans argue the move would right a historical wrong perpetrated by the Obama administration in 2011 when it awarded the four retired shuttles to other locales deemed likelier to attract more visitors.

And the reconciliation package has the money to do it now — unless the parliamentarian intervenes again.

The earlier $10 billion border fund advisory was the biggest blow to the Texas GOP delegation. Coupled with another $3.5 billion in the Judiciary panel’s text, there was more than enough to reimburse the $11 billion their state spent on Operation Lone Star during the Obama administration. That included border wall construction, apprehension and detention costs, among other things.

Top Texas Republicans in both chambers like Cornyn and Rep. Chip Roy said they wouldn’t back the bill without the money included. Given the need to round up the votes among their razor-thin majorities, adding the border state reimbursement fund is critical to GOP leaders’ whip efforts.

And for Cornyn, it would help demonstrate his clout in the race against Paxton, who is campaigning to topple the incumbent in part by arguing he is tougher on the border and more in line with President Donald Trump’s policies.

But Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough had raised questions about granting money to states for border security and immigration enforcement functions that are traditionally, and statutorily, within the federal government’s purview, Democrats said.

Graham’s proposed workaround would add a “terms and conditions” stipulation on the border money: “Nothing in this section shall authorize any State or local government to exercise immigration or border security authorities reserved exclusively to the Federal Government” under the Immigration and Nationality Act or the 2002 law establishing the Homeland Security Department.

At press time, there was no final word from the parliamentarian that she’d OK’d the new language.

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