Congress
Capitol agenda: GOP dreams face harsh legislative reality
The White House’s hopes for big legislative wins in the coming months are about to crash into the reality of the congressional GOP.
Deep divisions remain among Republicans over how to address spiking health care costs — and whether they should jam through a potential solution with a party-line vote in the Senate. And, of course, Democrats have little interest in helping them out.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s willingness to go to war against Republicans isn’t helping party unity.
The GOP rift is playing out ahead of the end-of-year expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. While vulnerable moderates want GOP leaders to extend the tax credits, Trump and some conservatives are calling for an entirely new framework, like an overhaul of health savings accounts.
Trump’s top political aide, James Blair, on Tuesday raised the possibility of a megabill sequel — pursuing GOP health care priorities through the party-line reconciliation process, which lets Republicans skirt a Democratic filibuster. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Tuesday that Republican leaders are talking to members about the possibility to see if “consensus forms.”
That pitch is being rejected by Republicans who remember how excruciating it was to pass the megabill this summer. They worry another attempt could undermine efforts to work across the aisle on matters like government funding.
“I don’t want another one-sided, partisan reconciliation bill right now — I want us to legislate,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who cast a decisive vote in the first package. “Let’s be legislators here. Reconciliation is, yes, it’s a tool for us, but it’s a partisan tool and look at how divided we are right now. … That’s not the way to go.”
Any attempt at partisan legislation will be complicated by the fact that Republicans are increasingly willing to break from Trump. (Case in point: Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.)
Speaker Mike Johnson, for his part, acknowledged a lesson that could be crucial for the president to grasp: Today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s indispensable ally.
“I work on unity in the party, and my encouragement of everybody is to get together,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to do all that in order to deliver for the people.”
What else we’re watching:
— House floor action: The House is expected to vote Wednesday to repeal a provision in the shutdown-ending deal that could allow eight GOP senators to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for having their electronic records seized during the Biden administration. And while there’s bipartisan support in both chambers to roll back the provision, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who secured the language, is standing by it.
— Notable Wednesday hearings: Paragon Health Institute’s Brian Blase, one of the fiercest critics of extending the enhanced ACA subsidies, will testify at a 10 a.m. Senate Finance hearing on rising health care costs. There’s also a 10 a.m. House Administration hearing on congressional insider trading, which is happening as pressure builds for House GOP leadership to take up a bipartisan bill banning the practice.
— What’s next for appropriations: Talks are set to ramp up on the other nine spending bills that weren’t included in last week’s shutdown-ending minibus deal. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has meetings teed up Wednesday morning to huddle with his subcommittee chairs, then with all House Republican appropriators.
Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Hailey Fuchs and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Less than a month ago, a huge bipartisan Senate majority voted to honor the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and pass legislation he pushed aimed at sanctioning Russia’s trading partners.
Now the bill is at serious risk of languishing in the House, where it is suffering from significant Democratic opposition, lack of Republican enthusiasm and fading impetus to honor the late South Carolina senator.
GOP leaders omitted it from a list of bills to be voted on this week, and as top Republican lawmakers filed into the Capitol Monday after a five-week summer recess, none said passing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act was anywhere near top of mind.
“We just came from a chairmen’s meeting, and nobody brought it up,” House Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said in an interview.
Asked whether the bill might pass through her committee on the way to the House floor, she said, “I have no idea. Nobody’s talking about it.”
Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged an uphill battle Monday and was noncommittal on whether the bill would hit the House floor after passing the Senate on an 86-11 vote.
“We’ll see,” Johnson said, blaming Democratic opposition for the uncertainty. “We’ve been very consistent on taking a strong hand against Russia. So we’ll see what happens.”
The measure’s backers in the House and Senate argue it would give the White House new leverage as it leans on Russia to end the war in Ukraine — including by handing President Donald Trump new tariff tools.
But with the GOP majority split over intervening in Russia’s war with Ukraine and many Democrats wary of giving Trump any new tariff powers, the bill doesn’t appear to be a top priority for Republican leaders as they plan out their final legislative sprint before the election.
Republicans are also openly speculating whether Johnson will keep the House in session for four weeks in September as scheduled — particularly if lawmakers pass a bill as expected Tuesday to punt government funding to December.
Johnson is already facing internal resistance to getting his scheduled bills on the floor this week, with some hard-right members unhappy about how GOP leaders have handled government funding and other issues. If they vote down a procedural measure setting up debate on those bills Tuesday, that could spell the end of the pre-election House session.
“I don’t know if we’re going to pass anything,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), one of the ultraconservatives threatening to frustrate the leadership’s plans.
At the same time, a handful of hawkish Republicans are warning that the House needs to stay and bring the sanctions bill across the finish line before heading home for campaign season.
“I think it’s very important to pass the sanctions bill,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a defense hawk who is retiring from the House. “It’s a failure to not do so.”
Even if leaders make a push to get the sanctions bill on the floor, it’s unclear if it has enough Republican support to pass. Several conservatives who have vocally opposed Ukraine aid in the past said they haven’t looked into the legislation yet.
“Haven’t seen it. Haven’t heard about it. All I can say is in 14 years I’ve never voted to sanction a sovereign country,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in an interview Monday.
While leaders could seek to skirt Republican opposition by using a fast-track procedure requiring a two-thirds-majority vote, it’s unclear if there are enough Democrats to push it over that threshold.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed “serious concerns” with the measure at a news conference Monday, saying top Democrats are worried that the bill “risks providing tariff and sanctions authority to Donald Trump and his administration that we believe they will abuse.”
The Democrats who are opposed include the party’s leaders on the Foreign Affairs and Ways and Means committees — Reps. Greg Meeks of New York and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, respectively — who argue that Trump already has all the tariff powers he needs.
“Donald Trump already has ample authority to impose sanctions on the companies, individuals, and vessels propping up a Russian war machine that continues its deadly attacks on Ukraine,” they wrote in a Monday joint statement with Democratic Rep.. Don Beyer of Virginia and Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “Congress does not need to greenlight new tariff authority for the President to impose those sanctions on Russia today.”
Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, leader of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, also opposes the sanctions bill and said in an interview Monday, “I’m opposed to giving the executive branch more authority that was rightly placed with the legislative branch a very long time ago.”
“We’ll see and evaluate if it comes to the floor,” Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat, said in an interview. “But there’s a great deal of concern about giving this president, who continues to drive up costs with tariffs for working Americans, even more authority to do that.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans Monday for being “pro-data center without any restraints,” making his strongest rebuke yet of the tech industry’s massive infrastructure buildout as it becomes a key issue in midterm campaigns.
“Donald Trump and Republicans are divorced from reality,” Jeffries said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “They think that the affordability crisis is a hoax. Donald Trump and Republicans have made clear they love inflation. Donald Trump and Republicans have told the American people directly, ‘We don’t think about your personal financial situation.’”
“So the Republicans — it should come as no surprise — are pro-data center without any restraints,” he continued.
His criticism of Republicans’ approach to artificial intelligence and the infrastructure needed to power it comes amid a groundswell of voter frustration in key battleground districts about the impact of data centers on their communities.
Jeffries told Blue Light News earlier this year protecting consumers from rising electricity costs associated with the data center boom would be a priority on Democrats’ should they win the majority.
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Monday that communities that reject data centers will end up “backwards and poor.”
Jeffries specifically hit Republicans for policies embedded in their sweeping 2025 tax-cuts-focused domestic policy bill.
“House Republicans voted to preempt state and local authorities from regulating data centers at all,” Jeffries said. “And every single House Republican but one or two voted to unleash data centers on the American people in an unfettered fashion. That’s facts, right there.”
He specifically blasted vulnerable Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and David Valadao of California for voting to “give tax credits to people building massive data centers in communities across the country, particularly in rural America, without restriction.”
“They can try to run away from their votes right now,” Jeffries said. “We will not let them hide.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will speak at the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the plans. The visit to Capitol Hill comes as more lawmakers express concerns about the burgeoning trade war President Donald Trump is escalating with Canada just months before the midterm elections.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.) will also be speaking to the group of House conservatives.
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