WASHINGTON — The Senate faces an expected budget vote-a-rama this week as Republicans seek to start the process of funding immigration enforcement without the support of Democrats.

A resolution from Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is expected to provide instructions for roughly $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. That would allow the agencies to be funded for a minimum of three years, or through the end of President Donald Trump’s term, without needing to go through the regular appropriations process.

Democrats have repeatedly expressed an unwillingness to fund the immigration agencies without significant operational reforms, and the Homeland Security Department is still partially shut down with no regular appropriations for the current fiscal year.

The decision to go forward with a budget resolution brings with it the scheduling complication of a “vote-a-rama,” in which senators have a limited time for debate but can offer unlimited amendments to try to get colleagues on the record with politically difficult votes.

It’s an arduous process that usually includes at least one all-night session. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters last week the plan was to try to craft the budget resolution in a way that the House can adopt it as-is, a procedural move that would prevent an additional vote-a-rama in the Senate.

“We’re communicating as much as we can, making sure that we’re syncing this up and doing it in the way that meets the requirements that both bodies have, and then also … engaged, obviously, with the White House on all this too,” Thune said.

The process already requires at least two of the marathon voting sessions — one on a budget resolution and one on an eventual budget reconciliation bill — in order to get through to passage with a simple majority vote required.

“Anything we can do to avoid extra vote-a-ramas would be nice,” Thune said.

But the timing and sequencing may be further complicated this week because of the state of play on reauthorizing and updating controversial surveillance authorities.

Over the weekend president Donald Trump signed a short-term extension of the intelligence tools under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but that only gives negotiators until the end of the month to come up with a longer plan after compromise efforts fell apart in the House last week.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., last week introduced a three-year extension that could be the basis for the Senate’s next move.

Meanwhile in the House, it’s an energy and environment week on the House floor, where the key legislation includes a bill to amend the Endangered Species Act.

But much of the focus in the House will be at the committee level, where it’s a big week for fiscal 2027 budget hearings and appropriations markups.

Appropriations season

The House Appropriations Committee begins its markup of both the Military Construction-VA and Financial Services spending bills on Tuesday, with subcommittee consideration of the National-Security State and Agriculture bills scheduled for Thursday.

Senate appropriators have a full slate of hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slated to appear before the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday.

A bunch of other Cabinet members will follow at their respective subcommittees on Wednesday, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Authorizing committees get their chance to question Cabinet members, too, as key members of the Trump administration make their rounds to explain and defend the president’s fiscal 2027 budget request.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, for instance, hears from Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Tuesday morning, and the Finance Committee gets its turn to question Kennedy on Wednesday morning.

Another key hearing for the week takes place Tuesday when the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be chair of the Federal Reserve.

Whether Warsh can advance hinges a lot on Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., as well as the decision-makers at the Department of Justice. Tillis has repeatedly pledged to block any Federal Reserve nominees while the Justice Department continues its investigation of current Chair Jerome Powell for potential false statements in testimony about renovations to the Federal Reserve building. Tillis has said the investigation is an effort to intimidate Powell into lowering interest rates.

“I will vote for Kevin Warsh simultaneously with the conclusion of that statement coming out of the DOJ, and not a day before, and not for the remaining … 264 days in my tenure in the U.S. Senate,” Tillis, who is retiring, said in an NBC News interview.

Republicans have only a one-seat majority on the Banking panel, where Tillis is a member.

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—Savannah Behrmann contributed to this report.

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