Heritage Experts React to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Budget Resolution

On Friday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released the Senate Budget Committee’s budget resolution for fiscal year 2025, which is anticipated to be the source of getting much of the MAGA agenda through Congress. 

Heritage Foundation experts analyzed the text and made suggestions.

“To those who voted for and support real border security and a stronger defense in a troubled world, help is on the way,” Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, declared in a press release.

“This budget resolution jumpstarts a process that will give President Trump’s team the money they need to secure the border and deport criminals, and make America strong and more energy independent,” the senator added.

Graham’s budget resolution outlines a plan to provide funding for finishing the border wall, upgrading the technology used to secure the southern border, and increasing the number of detention beds. 

The budget resolution also increases the number of ICE agents who administer detentions and deportations of illegal aliens in the United States as well as Border Patrol agents and assistant U.S. attorneys. The funding for more lawyers comes at a time when Biden vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have increased the number of federal judges in the United States who are responsible for hearing the crimes that both citizens and illegal aliens are accused of by the federal government. 

Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation, reacted to the budget resolution in a statement to The Daily Signal Friday. 

“I really wish Congress would stop using language that constricts mass deportations by limiting enforcement operations only to ‘criminal illegal aliens,’” Howell said. “The Trump mandate is for mass deportations of all illegal aliens, not just the 600,000 or so law enforcement caught committing additional crimes after illegally entering the U.S. Give Border Czar [Tom] Homan all he needs and no limitations to get the job done, because he will do it.”

Graham’s budget resolution also promised to expand American energy independence by eliminating the methane emissions fee, which is a tax on natural gas production, and by opening up leases to onshore and offshore drilling. 

“It’s the first time that the federal government has directly imposed a tax on so-called greenhouse gasses. It needs to be gotten rid of right away,” Jack Spencer, Senior Research Fellow for Energy and Environmental Policy, Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told The Daily Signal.

“It would have cost billions and billions of dollars in those fees and taxes that would have carried through almost everything that we do, from heating our homes to producing electricity.”

Spencer also praised the provisions in the bill that would open up onshore and offshore energy production.

“That’s critically important, especially given the anti-energy agenda that Biden set this up for, where one of his last actions in office was taking vast swaths of America’s offshore resources off the table,” Spencer said. 

Graham also laid out an ambitious plan to strengthen the United States military by growing the United States Navy, creating an integrated air and missile defense, and shoring up the United States nuclear defense. 

Republicans seem poised to deliver on much of what their voters want if they can manage to pass a comprehensive budget bill that doesn’t blow up the already immense national debt. 

“Republicans in Congress need to be focused on delivering results, not process,” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “The American people gave President Trump an overwhelming mandate in November, now Republicans need to get to work delivering on Trump’s agenda as soon as possible instead of getting bogged down in process disputes.”

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