Congress
Another megabill? Senate Republicans have their doubts.
House Republicans are pushing for a second megabill. The Senate GOP’s not so sure.
After a grueling ordeal to get President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” signed into law last month, Speaker Mike Johnson and other leaders are already talking about crafting at least one more domestic policy package that can pass along party lines in the Senate.
A White House official, granted anonymity to share details about private conversations, said another filibuster-skirting reconciliation bill is under discussion. The conservative Republican Study Committee has launched a “Reconciliation 2.0” working group and is hosting staff briefings throughout the summer recess to begin generating recommendations for follow-up legislation.
And Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said he’s open to considering as many as 200 tax proposals from his members that were ultimately not included in the first megabill.
But most senators have questions about what could go into another reconciliation package — and they’re casting doubts on whether it’s even politically possible to do this all over again.
“You have to have a reason to do it,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “It’s not easy to do, so you have to have a purpose for doing it in the first place.”
That unifying purpose for Republicans the first time around was a desire to deliver Trump a major legislative victory early in his second term and prevent a tax hike that they feared would weaken the economy. Republican leaders’ decision to throw in a debt limit extension through 2026 as Treasury warned the nation would soon exceed its borrowing authority added a do-or-die incentive.
“Without the pressure, I don’t see how you get it done,” said one Republican senator, granted anonymity to speak freely, about prospects for passing a second reconciliation bill without an existential impetus for action. “I don’t think I see what the pressure is here.”
At the same time, despite the White House’s enthusiasm for another reconciliation bill, administration officials have not yet told lawmakers what policies they want considered, according to three people speaking on condition of anonymity.
Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — chairs of the committees on Armed Services and Budget, respectively — also said before leaving for recess they have not received guidance from the White House. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he still hadn’t heard from the administration about its broader set of legislative priorities heading into the fall.
At this point, the loudest reconciliation push in the Senate is coming from deficit hawks like Sen. Ron Johnson, who wants to use another bill to cut spending further than what conservatives were able to achieve in the first package.
“Leadership is telling us we’ll do one or two more reconciliations in this Congress,” the Wisconsin Republican told reporters earlier this summer. “So the clock’s ticking”
While Senate Majority Leader John Thune has left the door open to doing a second reconciliation bill, he hasn’t provided a specific timeline for doing so.
One of the three people waiting to hear from Trump said the push for another party-line package is coming not as much from the administration as from the House. There, Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) has said lawmakers should try to rework policies cut from the first reconciliation bill to comply with Senate rules. But there’s skepticism in the Senate that the House will be able to successfully relitigate those proposals.
“My sense is that there’s more enthusiasm in the House than in the Senate, and that makes sense,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). “They can do things with 51 votes anyway, most of what we have to do requires 60. And that means that senators, if you have a desire to actually legislate, need to find ways to legislate — and reconciliation is damaging to that relationship.”
But House Republicans are also navigating their own slim margins and ideological divides. Conservatives and centrists clashed over cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits in the “big, beautiful bill,” and lawmakers could have a diminished appetite for further battles over hot-button issues, especially heading into an election year.
Some House GOP aides were alarmed earlier this week when a hard-line think tank, the Economic Policy Innovation Center, pitched an extended moratorium on Medicaid funding for large abortion providers in a Republican Study Committee staff briefing.
RSC leadership has stressed its megabill working group is designed at this point to generate ideas and put down markers, but EPIC’s recommendation could be a harbinger of other disputes to come.
Meanwhile, Republicans are already struggling to sell voters on the first megabill back in their home states and districts, where town halls and other constituent events in the early weeks of recess have so far been rocky.
One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there would be some “hesitancy” to dive back into reconciliation.
“We did so much in the first,” the member said. “It’s going to be harder to do a second one.”
Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.
Congress
Mike Johnson tries again to extend contested spy law
House GOP leaders on Thursday unveiled the text of a new three-year extension of a key spy law, as Speaker Mike Johnson tried to overcome ultra-conservative resistance and pass it next week.
The proposed reauthorization of the so-called Section 702 law includes some new oversight and penalties for abuses of the spy authority but stops short of warrant requirements sought by GOP hard-liners.
Conservatives have pushed back on extending Section 702, which allows warrantless surveillance of foreigners, because of concerns about U.S. citizens being caught up in the program.
The faction that’s been opposing an extension has not yet signed off on the latest plan. GOP leaders plan to continue talks into the weekend.
Congress
House GOP leaders scramble to sell Senate’s slimmed-down budget with promises of ‘Reconciliation 3.0’
House Republican leaders want a floor vote next week on the Senate’s budget resolution, the first step in writing an immigration enforcement bill and passing it by President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline.
“It has to be clean because it has to be quick,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday, indicating that conservatives could not make major changes to the other chamber’s blueprint at this time.
But Johnson and others still have to lock in support from conservatives who are threatening to vote against it if it doesn’t encompass more top GOP policy priorities, and it is proving to be a delicate balancing act.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (La.) met Thursday morning with Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (Texas) and leaders of key House GOP factions, according to four people granted anonymity to share details of private meetings — an effort to quell concerns among some conservatives about the narrow scope of the current plan. Arrington and other senior Republicans have been pushing to expand the party-line bill currently under discussion.
Johnson, Scalise and others in GOP leadership are promising that as soon as Republicans pass a bill funding immigration enforcement and some border patrol activities, they will get to work on another measure through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process.
“We’re going to move right to reconciliation, what will now be 3.0,” Johnson said, referring both to the current plan and the tax and spending megabill Republicans passed last summer. “We’re going to do it as quickly as possible.”
Some of the ideas that circulated during the closed-door leadership meeting Thursday included opening up the possibility for more tax policy changes, addressing the Trump administration’s request for $350 billion for the Pentagon, additional funding for the Iran war and spending cuts across social programs in another package.
Arrington, who is among those wishing to expand the upcoming reconciliation effort, is seeking steep spending reductions to social programs and hopes to revisit Obamacare spending — including cost-sharing reductions, which would reduce out-of-pocket health costs.
Leadership of the Republican Study Committee, meanwhile, is demanding that any third reconciliation bill be fully paid for. There has been limited angst over “pay-fors” for the current party-line pursuit because the measure is an attempt to fund the immigration enforcement agencies and circumvent regular appropriations negotiations, which have been stuck for months.
But many Republicans are doubtful their party will be able to pass another party-line bill ahead of the midterms and see the immigration funding bill as their last bite at the apple. Some of them, including Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, are threatening to vote against the Senate budget resolution that would unlock the reconciliation process for the immigration funding measure unless it can incorporate more items from the hard-liners’ wishlist.
GOP leaders are now scrambling to stave off defections. Adoption of identical budget resolutions in both chambers will unlock the ability for lawmakers to write and pass a bill through reconciliation that would send tens of billions of dollars to immigration enforcement operations run through the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shuttered since February.
Republicans are on a very tight schedule to send this bill to Trump’s desk and pave the way for ending the record-setting DHS shutdown, given White House demands.
Congress
‘Junior reporters’ pepper Hakeem Jeffries with tough questions
Hakeem Jeffries celebrated Take Your Child to Work Day by taking questions from the children of the Capitol Hill press corps, but it got heavy fast.
The first question: “Why do voters view Democrats so poorly?”
Jeffries responded with a lengthy explanation of broad voter distrust in institutions.
“There’s a great frustration that applies to every organized institution in this country, and Democrats are not immune from that,” he said.
But, Jeffries added, “Consistently in state after state and race after race and contest after contest, irrefutably, the American people are choosing the Democratic Party.”
He fielded other tough questions from the “junior reporters” in the room, including if he would have voted to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick if she hadn’t resigned earlier this week.
“She did the right thing in stepping down,” Jeffries said.
Other questions from kids in the room did tackle lighter subjects.
Jeffries’ favorite candy? Sugar-free Hershey’s chocolate.
What did he want to be when he grew up? A point guard for the Knicks or a hip-hop star.
Does he think the Yankees will win the World Series? “Hope springs eternal.”
And, simply, “What’s next?”
To that Jeffries said: “As Democrats, we’re fighting one battle after another, pushing back against the extremism that we believe is being released on the American people by Donald Trump and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.”
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