Congress
Doubts abound for Thune’s aggressive megabill timeline
In Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s perfect world, he’d be ready by this time next week to start voting on the GOP’s sweeping megabill.
But this world is far from perfect, Thune and fellow Senate Republicans learned Tuesday. A host of concerns from diverse pockets of the GOP are threatening his grand plan of winning Senate passage by July 4 — with some in his ranks warning of an epic face-plant if Republican leaders push too hard, too fast.
“My guess is it will fail,” predicted Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) when asked about potentially calling votes next week. “I don’t want to see it fail. I want this thing to succeed.”
Monday’s highly anticipated release of legislative text on tax, health care and other key policy provisions only served to underscore the challenges yet to be overcome. Fiscal hawks like Johnson are sounding the alarm that the bill doesn’t do nearly enough to lower the deficit. More moderate senators are voicing deep unease about new Medicaid provisions. Still others don’t like the proposed changes to clean-energy incentives or President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts.
These considerable policy gaps are up against a thin Republican majority — Thune has only three votes to spare, and one all-but-guaranteed “no” vote in Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — and a seemingly impossible timeline. Leaders are hoping to take a first vote on the megabill by next Wednesday or Thursday, according to GOP senators and aides, setting up final passage over the weekend.
But committees are still trying to get fiscal estimates for their proposals as well as final rulings from the Senate parliamentarian, which could jettison some of their pet provisions from the bill at the 11th hour.
While Vice President JD Vance backed the July 4 target for Senate passage during a closed-door lunch with Republican senators Tuesday, he pointed to the August recess as the ultimate deadline for getting a bill to Trump’s desk, according to two attendees.
The pessimism about quick Senate action has drifted downtown, where lobbyists are still poring over the 549-page text released Monday by the Senate Finance Committee. K Street power players are closely monitoring the negative reactions inside the Senate GOP.
“The general sense downtown that is causing concern is that the bill in its current form cannot pass either body,” said one lobbyist at a prominent Washington firm who was granted anonymity to share their views candidly. “So the bill is still, by necessity, open and will be changed.”
Another lobbyist, speaking under similar conditions, said that as Senate Republicans “have to shift policy to get votes, there are big dollars in play” that could force lawmakers to explore deep cuts in other policy areas — cuts that could expose entirely new fissures.
And that’s setting aside another inconvenient fact for Republicans: Whatever changes the Senate makes, the House will have to weigh in again after only narrowly passing its carefully crafted version of the bill last month. Some senators are already suggesting the House will just have to deal with whatever ends up getting sent back over.
“We first get 51 senators together and then we’ll see what the House can do,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Tuesday, referring to the contentious Finance text as “an initial draft.”
Getting 51 senators, however, is looking like a tall order.
GOP Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Susan Collins of Maine reiterated their concerns Tuesday with the Finance proposal to cap medical provider taxes that fund state obligations to Medicaid, arguing that it could hurt rural hospitals.
Though her state doesn’t use provider taxes, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has her own concerns about different Medicaid language pertaining to new work requirements. Asked if she is prepared to vote down the bill over the Medicaid issues, she said, “I don’t think it’s going to stay in this form.”
Hawley separately critiqued the tax provisions rolled out by Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), calling the package a “departure from what President Trump called for” in a Tuesday morning interview with MAGA strategist Steve Bannon: “They want to roll back some of these Trump tax cuts, the populist tax cuts: no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime.”
He told reporters in the Capitol that he had spoken with Trump about the Senate proposal, describing the president as “surprised” by the bill’s Medicaid language. And Collins, who met with Vance separately this week, said she is still suggesting changes to the bill.
Thune, after the Senate’s closed-door lunch, acknowledged he is still negotiating with members of his conference, including Hawley and Collins, about “components or pieces of the bill that they would like to see modified or changed.”
Items that are likely to be the subject of the heaviest lobbying include a tax cut for pass-through businesses that was reduced from the House plan as well as a planned increase in university endowment taxes — even though Senate Republicans significantly softened what House Republicans had proposed.
The job of threading the needle has largely fallen to Crapo, the stealthy dealmaker who crafted the Medicaid and tax portion of the legislation and briefed GOP conference members Monday on the policies.
“He did what he does best: balanced everybody’s concerns and found the sweetest spot he could find, and it’s not adequate for some people,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) of how Crapo’s been fielding concerns from his colleagues.
One major issue is that Crapo’s draft made some business tax cuts permanent rather than sunsetting them at the end of 2029, as the House did — a key priority for himself and his fellow Finance Committee Republicans, but at the expense of some other provisions, including the provider tax.
“Every spending reduction that we were able to achieve was helpful in achieving the permanence,” Crapo told reporters Tuesday, estimating the Medicaid changes alone generated hundreds of billions of dollars in offsets.
But GOP senators who expected Crapo’s Medicaid language to largely match the House’s were caught off guard by those changes, and now he and Thune are dealing with potentially time-consuming pushback.
“I never thought we could get it done by the Fourth of July,” said Murkowski. “But you know what? I’m not in charge of the schedule.”
Congress
WHCD shooting fuels new efforts in Congress to get Trump his ballroom
President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress want to quickly authorize completion of the White House ballroom after the Saturday shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But it’s not going to be simple.
Trump’s ambitious ballroom project was put on hold earlier this year after a federal judge said Congress needed to explicitly approve it. Responses from lawmakers were relatively muted at that time. Then over the weekend, Trump and several members of the presidential line of succession were sitting down to their salads at a Washington hotel when a gunman tried to storm past a security checkpoint.
Now, what was once regarded by many lawmakers as a nice-to-have is being viewed as a necessary venue for future events and celebrations. Multiple Hill Republicans have made public promises to try to approve the ballroom’s construction as soon as this week despite there being no clear path to getting a bill quickly to Trump’s desk.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.S.C) said he has been hearing from Trump directly about the ballroom and wants Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “expedite” consideration of his new bill with GOP Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Eric Schmitt of Missouri that would provide up to $400 million for the project.
Schmitt told reporters that while the ongoing legal battle isn’t over and that he believes Trump has the authority to build the ballroom on his own, Saturday’s shooting “renews the focus” on finding ways to finish the project without delays or complications.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is expected to try Tuesday to pass his bill that would authorize construction of the ballroom. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) is also expected to go to the Senate floor this week to try and pass his own bill.
Yet Republicans are facing multiple hurdles, the most serious of which is that senators don’t have support to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are furious the ballroom is being built on the rubble of the East Wing that Trump bulldozed without consulting with lawmakers or planning and preservation review boards.
That’s giving way to talk among some Republicans about trying to jam it into the party-line immigration enforcement bill Trump wants on his desk by June 1 — a maneuver that might not work or could, at the very least, complicate the GOP’s ability to meet its deadline as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown drags on.
Trump himself urged the House to approve the budget blueprint as-is that the Senate advanced last week, which would tee up a bill through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol activities — part of a two-step plan to reopen DHS after bipartisan negotiations fell through.
Even House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, who has called for expanding the pending reconciliation bill, is warning against making changes.
He said Monday the package will be “completely focused” on ICE and Border Patrol funding. And he warned that if Republicans start adding things now, it would open the door to adding items from a much larger conservative wish list.
“Listen, if we were going to add stuff to this, I’ve got a list and it’s going to start with fiscal reforms on preventing more fraud, and then you’ve got a host of other reforms on health care and housing affordability,” Arrington said.
Three Senate aides said Monday that a ballroom-related provision would not comply with the chamber’s rules for inclusion in the measure under the budget reconciliation process, anyway. Further complicating matters is that Republicans aren’t united behind one specific ballroom proposal, with Paul noting he would support putting a nominal amount of funding in but not hundreds of millions of dollars like Graham is envisioning.
Thune kept his options open Monday, telling reporters his conference would see what was “achievable.” But he acknowledged that the budget blueprint his chamber drafted did not task all of the relevant committees with oversight of the ballroom project to draft the reconciliation bill itself.
“I don’t know,” Thune said when pressed if it could be included in the immigration enforcement package.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) also urged his colleagues to tread carefully on the reconciliation plan.
“If we change it, then we put it in jeopardy. So I would prefer not to put it in jeopardy,” he said to reporters Monday evening. “I understand that there’s a desire to move forward with some of the construction over there, but let’s get a win under our belt.”
Graham, who chairs the Budget Committee, didn’t close the door to trying to tackle the ballroom through the party-line process but appeared to be frustrated about the prospect that it could come to that.
“I’d like to do it as a freestanding bill with an offset,” Graham said at a news conference Monday. “Let’s give it a chance, and if we fail, we’ll have to go to Plan B.”
Yet so far, with the exception of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), no Senate Democrat is biting.
“If Republicans truly want to improve security, they should join Democrats in funding the Secret Service, not Donald Trump’s luxury ballroom,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Congress
Florida Republicans make peace with proposed new House map
Some House Republicans spent weeks warning against a drastic redraw of Florida’s congressional map.
Now that it’s out — with Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting as many as four Democratic seats for a GOP takeover — they’re mostly keeping any criticism to themselves.
“I think they did a pretty good job,” said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who said he was one of the Florida Republicans whose district changed “quite a bit.”
“But I think they could touch it up a little bit, too,” he added.
Rep. Scott Franklin said he is set to represent his third constituency in four terms. He still lives within the confines of the 18th district, he said, though it is much smaller in area.
“Mine gets significantly less red than it was,” Franklin said. “But it’s still a conservative performing seat.”
DeSantis’ map still has to be approved by the Florida legislature, and it’s almost certain to face challenges in court. But many of the states’ 20 Republicans are already making peace with new districts that will be at least slightly more competitive.
Many warned that redrawing the existing GOP-favored map to pick up more than one or two Democratic seats could dangerously dilute the Republican vote. And at least one, Jacksonville-area Rep. John Rutherford, said targeting four “could be a bit much.”
Down the Atlantic coast, the reviews were more positive. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s Miami-area district remains largely untouched under the new maps, while her neighbor Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart could see his safe Republican seat only slightly diluted.
“Not bad, right? I’m used to those lines, so I’m happy,” Salazar said. “And I was one of the people that could have been highly damaged.”
She declined to comment on whether she expects the new map to net the four seats the GOP is craving: “God knows what’s going to happen.”
Several of the Florida Democrats who are now in danger expressed more concern. They now face running in unfriendly districts or switching districts and possibly running against a current colleague.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a South Florida Democrat, said he plans on running again and that he believes DeSantis’ effort will backfire by creating more tossup districts. Rep. Darren Soto called the map a violation of state and federal law but said he plans to run in his current Orlando-area district nonetheless.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a veteran Democrat representing a district south of Fort Lauderdale called the new map “a completely unconstitutional partisan gerrymander” and said she was waiting to review detailed data on her redrawn district.
“But the main thing is that this is illegal, and we’re going to sue,” she said.
Congress
Charles to argue for a strong US-UK partnership in address to Congress
King Charles will use his speech to Congress to help repair the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain that has been under strain over the Iran war.
The king plans to focus on reconciliation and renewal in a speech Tuesday before the House and Senate that is expected to run about 20 minutes, according to royal aides.
Charles will celebrate “one of the greatest alliances in history,” which has been tested as President Donald Trump complains about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reluctance, along with other NATO allies, to provide assistance to the U.S.-led attacks on Iran, the aides said.
He will reference the shared national security interests of the U.S. and the U.K., including NATO, the Middle East, Ukraine and the trilateral AUKUS pact with Australia.
Starmer’s handling of some of those issues has provoked criticism from Trump, who derisively referred to the prime minister as “not Winston Churchill” after the U.K. initially didn’t allow the U.S. to use its bases to bomb Iran at the beginning of the war.
When asked earlier in this month about his relationship with Starmer and the state of the U.S.-U.K. partnership, Trump told ITV News it was “not good at all.”
Charles is expected to acknowledge that tension by noting that the two nations have not always seen eye to eye, but that “time and again, our two countries have always found ways to come back together,” according to royal aides.
In his address, Charles also plans to tout the need to respect the rule of law and democratic traditions, and argue for the importance of trade and technology deals — a message that may go over less well with the administration.
Royal aides said the king’s remarks will also include a brief message of sympathy for Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Dan Bloom contributed to this report.
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