Tensions rising in GOP over Trump border plan as Rand Paul squares off with Stephen Miller

By Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, Nicky Robertson and Ted Barrett, CNN

(CNN) — A bitter feud is escalating between Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Donald Trump’s top border official, injecting uncertainty into Congress’s attempt to pass the administration’s signature policy bill this month.

Key Trump adviser Stephen Miller came to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Republicans on Thursday to resolve a major issue over the bill’s border security provisions – which Paul opposes.

Paul and Miller have been locked in a dispute for days over the border funding. The White House is seeking $150 billion in funds for border security and deportation. But Paul – who has repeatedly lashed out against the price tag of Trump’s bill – wants to dramatically cut down that funding.

Now, that tension between the two key GOP figures is spilling into the open.

Paul is taking swipes at Miller to reporters on Capitol Hill, attacking Miller for his recent comments about the administration looking at suspending habeas corpus and then suggesting on Wednesday that Miller himself was the reason he was uninvited from a White House picnic. Trump has since personally asked him and his family to attend the Thursday event, the senator said. Miller, meanwhile, has been firing off social media posts at the Kentucky senator, accusing him of, for instance, trying to cut funding for border security amid the Los Angeles riots.

“They want to quiet me down, and it hasn’t worked, and so they’re going to try to attack me. They’re going to try to destroy me in other ways, and then do petty little things like social occasions or whatever. But you know, it probably will not work. It probably will not make me cow down or bend over,” Paul told CNN on Wednesday, after saying he was disinvited from the White House picnic. Asked if he was talking about Miller, Paul nodded.

Paul’s strong push to limit Trump’s border security cash puts him mostly on an island among Hill Republicans, according to one person familiar with the talks, though other GOP senators pressed Miller about specific funding accounts in a meeting earlier Thursday. And the back-and-forth has frustrated some of their fellow GOP senators.

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said Miller “did a good job” answering GOP senators’ questions on Thursday about border wall money, but he added some Republicans “were upset” or “just didn’t want to hear it.”

“I mean, Rand Paul’s solution is cut everything in half and call it good. Yeah, that’s not real budgeting,” Mullin added.

Paul, however, has defended his stance, insisting that the White House needs to justify its funding request, especially since it was made before Trump came into office. And he specifically called out a certain GOP senator whom he accused of being a fiscal hawk only when “convenient.”

“Senator Graham wants to make sure the president gets exactly what he wants. He’s a rubber stamp, and I am a believer that we are acting fiscally responsible at every level of government, across government, and that you can’t just sort of be fiscally conservative when it’s convenient, when it comes to the border,” Paul told reporters Thursday.

Paul did not attend Miller’s visit to Senate Republicans on Thursday, citing a conflicting committee meeting. Even so, the meeting at times grew contentious over the president’s plans to spend billions on the border.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, offering a defense of his GOP colleagues, said those Republicans were interested in more specifics about how the border money would be spent.

“I think what everybody was pushing back is we want more detail. I know exactly how the money is going to be spent. It’s not, has nothing to do with whether we support him,” Scott said.

One of those probing Miller on the border funding was GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, another fiscal hawk who has been working to make sure Trump’s pricey tax breaks don’t add to the deficit.

“The numbers didn’t quite add up,” Johnson later told reporters of his questions to Miller. “He did a really good job of explaining why it is going to be more expensive, but then just how difficult it is going to be to create the beds and the expense of that.”

“There was just some basic numbers that we weren’t aware of. We didn’t have the math. We didn’t have their calculation. I think he was a little blindsided from that standpoint.”

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