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Capitol agenda: GOP dreams face harsh legislative reality

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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.

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Congress

DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote

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The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.

The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.

The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”

House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.

“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

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Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.

In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.

“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.

Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.

Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.

His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.

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‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal

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House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.

Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.

But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.

“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”

The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.

President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.

Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.

“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”

Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.

“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.

Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.

He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.

But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.

The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.

The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”

Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”

A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.

Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.

The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.

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