Congress

Doubts abound for Thune’s aggressive megabill timeline

Published

1 year ago

June 17, 2025

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

Senate confirms Blanche as attorney general

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Saturday confirmed Todd Blanche to be attorney general, following a weeks-long struggle with a handful of wary Republicans.

The Senate voted 50-49 to approve him, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining with Democrats in opposition.

Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi’s ouster in April. Questions about Blanche’s potential conflicts of interest from representing Trump, as well as his role in the creation of a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of Trump’s settlement this spring with the IRS, created headwinds to his confirmation among a key group of Senate Republicans.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who lost re-election after Trump endorsed a primary challenger, helped Blanche clinch his 50th vote Friday. He said Blanche wasn’t perfect but that he wasn’t sure Trump would pick someone better to lead the Justice Department.

“The choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” Cassidy said on the Senate floor. “It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”

Cassidy’s support came after Blanche had already spent weeks negotiating with Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who vetted his nomination as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cornyn struck an agreement with Blanche Sunday for the DOJ to curtail the payout fund and rein in a deal to exempt Trump from IRS audits.

Cassidy’s support came hours after Murkowski announced that she would oppose Blanche’s nomination, putting it on the brink of potential failure. Between unified opposition from Democrats and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence for health reasons, Blanche could only lose two Republicans and still be confirmed.

Hours before Friday’s vote, Murkowski told reporters she spoke with Blanche multiple times but that she was “good with where I am.” She said there was no “one” thing that motivated her decision.

“If there was one thing, we might be able to go back to the White House and say ‘Hey, can we work on this one thing,’” she said. “But for me it was a compilation.”

She added that she believed the anti-weaponization fund is “pretty dead” but “what is not so clear” are the audit immunity provisions of Trump’s IRS agreement, “which I just think are viewed by so many in this country as kind of a special and sweet deal for the president and his family.”

Congress

Senate passes funding bill to avert October shutdown

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate passed a bill Saturday to fund the government beyond the midterm elections, putting the onus back on the House to head off a shutdown looming Oct. 1.

The Senate approved the measure in a bipartisan 90-6 vote, with Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina voting present. The bill would fund federal agencies through Dec. 11 at current levels, with some exceptions. Senate leaders sped up consideration of the legislation as part of an agreement reached Saturday morning to allow members to leave for August recess.

The House and Senate have now each passed different bills aimed at averting a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. The House bill would fund the government through Dec. 4.

The Senate legislation sets up a year-end standoff over the Trump administration’s controversial plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants. The bill would block the administration from finalizing that rule during the length of the stopgap — and lawmakers are already expecting a December brawl over the issue.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said this week that he’s going to “fight like hell” in December to ensure Congress doesn’t further obstruct the grant overhaul.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resistant to the White House approach to grants. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she will “continue to oppose” the Trump administration plans “because I think they politicize the grants process, and I don’t want that to occur.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on Senate Appropriations, said she too would “welcome the fight.”

The Senate rejected an amendment from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) intended to ensure that a ban on intoxicating hemp products kicks in come November, after Senate leaders at the White House’s urging included language in the funding bill to delay it.

The Senate bill includes language Democrats sought to ensure Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol don’t get any new funding under the patch. Republicans enacted $70 billion for those agencies along party lines earlier this year.

That prohibition could be contentious in the House.

Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) said in an interview that the provision “could be a dealbreaker” and that he’s “not a fan” of the Senate version. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said Tuesday that he would say he’s undecided if GOP leadership whipped his vote on the Senate stopgap.

“I do not like the Senate language,” Van Drew said, noting the grant approval provision. “It’s one I would want to know what the president thinks.”

The White House issued a statement of administration policy in support of the Senate’s funding bill. No such memo was issued for the House bill, which did not include the funding increases and authorizations the White House requested.

“Every Member of Congress should support passage of this [continuing resolution] to keep the Government open as discussions on full year appropriations continue,” it reads.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House, praised the Senate measure for including the grant and immigration enforcement language.

“This bill is a clear improvement over the House Republican continuing resolution, but we are still nearly two months away from the end of the fiscal year and should be working together to pass full-year funding bills,” she said in a statement.

Mia McCarthy and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate eyes the exit after GOP-Trump deal

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate is aiming to leave Washington for a five-week recess early Saturday after Republicans cut a deal with President Donald Trump to punt some of their priorities, including a framework for a party-line spending plan.

The Senate is trying to lock in an agreement that would set up votes on a college sports bill, a stopgap government funding bill, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination and GOP voter ID legislation, according to a copy of an internal notice reviewed by Blue Light News.

The Senate would then leave Washington until mid-September.

Any one senator could object to the tentative deal, forcing it to be altered or dragging the Senate deeper into the weekend. Senators believe there are still objections to advancing the college sports bill. Democrats are also waiting to see if one of their own will prevent speeding up Blanche’s confirmation.

The breakthrough is a U-turn from earlier Friday evening, when Republican senators emerged from a closed-door meeting predicting they would have to spend Saturday trying to break a stalemate within the party about how to wrap final votes before recess.

Shortly after that meeting, Trump spoke by phone with Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah about the path forward for the GOP’s lengthy to-do list.

During the call, according to Johnson, Trump agreed to punt a vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill until later in the year. Lee, who has been pushing for action on the separate SAVE America Act, also agreed to drop his demand for a formal, roll call vote on adjourning given the understanding with the president.

“I think the conclusion of the conference – and we had a discussion with the president and he agrees – [is] don’t take the vote tonight,” Johnson said after the meeting in Thune’s office.

Republicans were in talks with the White House throughout Friday. A White House official granted anonymity said Friday evening that “we’re continuing to have productive conversations with senators to advance several legislative priorities.”