This week Congress took yet another step toward undercutting its Constitutionally derived power of the purse by securing funding for border and immigration agencies through a second budget reconciliation bill. While enactment of the Secure America Act may be seen as a win for Republicans and the Trump Administration, it’s ultimately a loss for Congress itself. Reconciliation was never intended to be a tool for tackling our biggest fiscal and societal issues, let alone a substitute for the appropriations process. Congress should get back to legislating to make more enduring public policies that serve taxpayers.

Enactment of S. 2, the Secure America Act, marks the second use of the reconciliation process this fiscal year. This time Republicans used it to end-run the Senate filibuster and secure $70 billion in funding for ICE and CBP. Importantly the money directed to the agencies is available through FY2029, meaning the administration can fund the day-to-day activities of these agencies through the end of the president’s term without having to wait on permission (an appropriation) from Congress. While this locks in billions in funding before a possible shift to Democratic control in 2027, these short-term wins come with long term fiscal and institutional harms.

Reconciliation was designed as a technical tool for deficit reduction, but has become a means of implementing major, and costly, partisan bills. In 2017, reconciliation carried the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which was originally projected to add roughly $1.5 trillion to the debt over a decade. Last year, it carried the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended and expanded those TCJA tax cuts—along with new ones—at a direct cost of roughly $3.4 trillion over ten years, and more than $4 trillion when interest costs are included. The Democrats tapped reconciliation in 2022 to enact the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act, and while it was expected to reduce deficits, many of those offsets, like increased tax collection from improved enforcement, have failed to materialize. And now the Secure America Act appropriates $69.5 billion without even attempting to offset the spending elsewhere.

While the evolution of reconciliation from a tool of deficit reduction to partisan policymaking has been detrimental to the nation’s finances, the next chapter in reconciliation could be even worse for Congress. By funding CBP and ICE through reconciliation, and contemplating a third bill to give the Pentagon a $350 billion slush fund, lawmakers have effectively jumped from the mandatory and tax side of the ledger into the discretionary world. And while discretionary spending only constitutes less than 30 percent of federal spending, it funds national security, education, transportation, veterans’ health care, and a host of other programs that touch people in their daily lives. It’s also the part of the budget where Congress is guaranteed, in fact compelled, to act.

The power of the purse is Congress’s most potent authority. The process of crafting each appropriations bill, from subcommittee to full committee to the House and Senate floors, provides opportunities for lawmakers and taxpayers to identify needs and debate priorities. Oversight hearings require administration officials to come before Congress. They can be combative, they can be congenial, but they do have to make the trip to Capitol Hill. Appropriations laws not only provide funding, they attach conditions to how that funding is used. And the appropriations process, through hearings, testimony, legislative text, and bill reports creates a public record of congressional intent.

Extending the budget reconciliation process into discretionary spending threatens this system. Reconciliation is designed to fast-track decisions. By design it limits oversight hearings, constrains debate, and short-circuits the deliberative process of lawmaking. And if it’s used to replace annual discretionary spending with multi-year buckets of cash handed to agencies, it reduces the need for the administration, any administration, to be responsive to Congress.

For a branch that loves to rail against “executive overreach,” Congress is surprisingly generous about handing the executive a long-term, lightly supervised credit card. Lawmakers routinely resorting to budget reconciliation are choosing short-term gain at the expense of long-term fiscal health and giving up a little more of their own authority each time.