Congress

House Republicans huddle with Bessent on tax policy menu

Published

1 year ago

March 11, 2025

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee huddled on Monday with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to review a large menu of tax options for the GOP’s policy agenda.

The tax writers were for the most part tight-lipped on what they discussed as they exited the all-day session at the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress. But committee members indicated that it was a productive discussion about the framework for a large bill that would enact President Donald Trump’s tax agenda, which would include an extension of trillions of dollars in expiring tax cuts.

“We’re looking at the menu,” said Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), a freshman on the committee, adding, “I don’t think we’ve ordered anything.”

Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said he wouldn’t share anything about the details of the meeting, only that “it went very well.”

The meeting showed that House Republicans are forging ahead in crafting legislation under the budget they passed in February — even as Senate Republicans are indicating that they’d like major changes to the House framework.

Indeed, around the same time that the House tax writers dispersed, their counterparts on the Senate Finance Committee convened Monday evening to discuss the chamber’s path forward.

Those senators indicated coming out of the meeting that they weren’t close to a consensus on how to proceed on the tax cuts that have been demanded by Trump, or the size of spending cuts that would need to be included in the package to placate fiscal conservatives.

“There’s a lot more work to do,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “The reality is we have to get this done by probably August time frame. It would be ideal to get it done sooner. … I would rather do the time and get it right.”

That’s far from the Memorial Day time frame Smith said House Republicans are aiming for to get a bill to Trump’s desk.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said “there’s no consensus” on his side of the Capitol.

“It’s a slow, challenging process,” he said. “We’re still at the early stages.”

Senate Republicans are largely united in wanting to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, but several said Monday coming out of the meeting that they don’t yet have buy-in from the conference on the size of spending reductions they should push for — and predicted a major fight to come. Senate GOP leaders have warned privately that it would be hard to match the House GOP’s level of cuts without touching Medicaid, a move that sparks unease among some Senate Republicans.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a member of the Finance Committee, argued for Republicans to “get serious about real spending reductions,” adding that there was $1.3 trillion in mandatory spending beyond Medicaid. He said that accepting the House plan — which sticks a significant portion of the spending cuts with one committee, Energy and Commerce — is not “serious.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) added after the meeting that he still does not yet support using the current policy baseline to extend the tax cuts. The accounting tactic would make it appear as though extending the tax cuts costs nothing.

In addition to the Senate Finance Republicans’ talks, which have been happening for months, GOP senators are also expected to discuss budget reconciliation, as well as a more urgent government funding deadline, during their closed-door lunch Tuesday. Republicans plan to use the reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster of the larger legislation carrying Trump’s priorities.

The dual-track between the House and Senate comes even as House Republicans want to get the bill through their chamber next month.

Republicans in both chambers know they will eventually need to merge their work products, but how or when that happens is still unclear — and some Senate Republicans are continuing to push privately and publicly for their two-bill approach, which would deal with energy, defense and border issues first and taxes second.

“Obviously we’re still waiting for top line information from the Senate, and we can then start drilling down into the particulars, but we’re getting a good sense of where members stand on the various provisions,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.).

The House adopted a budget resolution teeing up a single omnibus bill that would link together tax, defense, energy and the border last month.

But since then, Senate Republicans have largely hit the brakes as they work to determine how to get 51 votes from their own members on the spending cuts and the tax piece. They are also keeping an eye on House Republicans to see if they can meet Speaker Mike Johnson’s self-imposed timeline for getting a bill to the floor.

Asked about House Republicans kvetching during a closed-door meeting earlier Monday about the Senate not moving fast enough, one Senate GOP aide pointed back to the House quipping: “Where is their bill? If they’re cranky about our pace.”

Congress

Senate Republicans exclude Democrats’ food aid demand from farm bill

Published

6 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans’ farm bill proposal rejects Democrats’ demands to delay a planned shift of some food aid costs to states, according to three people familiar with the plans — jeopardizing hopes of winning bipartisan support for the package.

Democrats say they will oppose a farm bill that doesn’t push back a requirement that will soon force some states to pay for some Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a provision included in the domestic policy megalaw Republicans passed last year.

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) gave Senate staff and industry representatives a private preview of his farm bill text Monday afternoon ahead of a planned public release of the discussion draft at 2 p.m. Tuesday, according to the people, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the not-yet-public plans.

Boozman will need some Democratic support to guarantee the bill can clear the 60-vote threshold on the Senate floor.

A GOP spokesperson for the Agriculture Committee said Boozman had “developed a discussion draft that can earn the bipartisan support needed for Senate passage.” The spokesperson added that Boozman will continue talks with senators and industry representatives while “finalizing text and moving toward a markup.”

The draft legislation also excludes some Republican and agriculture industry priorities, such as provisions that would allow year-round sales of E15 fuel and block states from creating certain animal welfare and pesticide labeling laws, according to the three people.

Senators from both parties are already eyeing how they might amend the bill to include their priorities. That could muddy the legislation’s path forward by generating a number of conflicts during the committee’s markup ahead of a potential floor vote on the package.

Some GOP senators whose state budgets would be hard hit by the change have privately indicated that they would support delaying the provision, which is set to begin October 2027.

Those senators and anti-hunger advocates argue the SNAP cost-share plan will kick people off the program and lead to benefit cuts. Democrats also note that many states will already receive delays or exemptions to the cost-share requirement due to high or low payment error rates.

Boozman said in an interview last month that he was “open to listening” to Democrats’ argument, but contended it could complicate his efforts to craft a budget-neutral bill.

The Senate’s version largely mirrors the House’s, which passed with 12 Democratic votes in April. Boozman is aiming to mark up his bill between the chamber’s Fourth of July and August recesses.

Congress

Senate Republicans say it’s time to give Trump a reality check

Published

6 hours ago

June 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Donald Trump is about to come face to face with one of his frequent punching bags: Senate Republicans.

They might just be in a mood to punch back.

The president was invited to GOP senators’ Wednesday lunch to push for his No. 1 priority, the GOP election bill known as the SAVE America Act. But several outgoing Republicans who have clashed with Trump said Monday they will be there to deliver a reality check: The bill isn’t passing, and it’s time to move on.

“I’m going to be there front and center,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “It will be important if it actually is a constructive exchange of different opinions, and hopefully we can all get on the same page. Right now, we’re not in a great place.”

Cornyn, who recently lost his bid for a fifth term to a Trump-endorsed challenger, reiterated the votes just aren’t there to pass the elections bill: “I’ve been around here long enough and been through enough battles and counted enough votes to know that it doesn’t just magically occur, no matter how much you wish it would happen.”

Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — who are also departing the Senate in part due to Trump — said Monday they, too, will be at the closed-door lunch and urged Trump to turn the page on the SAVE America Act.

“I’m a co-sponsor, but it doesn’t have the votes, and so it’s time to talk about something else,” said Cassidy, who also lost to a Trump-backed primary opponent.

Trump was invited to the Wednesday lunch by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who oversees the weekly gathering as GOP steering committee chair, at a tenuous moment. Senate Republicans have grown frustrated with Trump’s fixation on the elections bill, are openly questioning parts of his Iran deal and worry that his habit of blindsiding them with sudden policy U-turns is making it harder to preserve their majority in November.

Scott’s invitation comes as the elections bill has emerged as a perennial headache for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, whom Scott informed of the invite after it was extended. Thune and other members of the GOP conference insist it doesn’t have the votes to pass and have begged Trump to focus on more attainable priorities.

Same goes, they say, for other Trump demands — killing the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation, for instance, and ending the “blue slip” practice of giving home-state senators a say on some presidential nominees.

“None of those are going to happen here, and we need to be honest with the president,” Tillis said. “So why don’t we spend more time being productive about how we communicate, when we communicate, and get some of these very pressing issues done?”

But Trump has shown he will not relent, especially on the SAVE America Act — a bill that would impose new proof-of-citizenship and identification requirements for U.S. voters in its base form, with the president demanding still other controversial provisions added on top of that.

In a Truth Social post late last week, Trump name-checked Thune and urged the Senate to nix the filibuster and approve the bill: “Anybody who doesn’t want to Terminate the Filibuster is a FOOL, a very stupid one, at that!”

Several GOP senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have objected to the precedent the bill would set by nationalizing election procedures. Test votes on the bill have not garnered more than 48 supporters, though a narrower bill focused on voter ID won 50 votes. That’s still far short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a certain Democratic filibuster.

Asked late last week about Trump’s comments, Thune said a majority of Senate Republicans have long-held views against nixing the filibuster.

“It’s not a question of what I want to do or don’t want to do,” he said. “It does always come back to the math. And … there just aren’t the votes to do it.”

Thune said Monday that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the election bill comes up but predicted it would be a “back and forth” between Trump and GOP senators over multiple subjects, including the brewing Iran deal and the stalemate over a key surveillance law and future of the director of national intelligence post.

He added that “hopefully” the discussion would include “celebrating some of our successes, talking about the path forward.”

The GOP election bill has become a consistent friction point within the party and within the Senate GOP conference. Senate Republicans largely support the bill but believe the party needs to turn its focus to Democrats, rather than fighting each other, with just months to go until the midterms.

Republican senators have kvetched for months about how they believe Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is setting unrealistic expectations for the bill’s passage. Lee posted on X over the weekend that he spoke with Trump and “he’s as convinced as I am that we can get this done if the Senate’s willing to do the hard work.”

Cornyn called out Lee Monday, saying that he “is contributing to this fantasy that somehow it’s going to happen.”

Lee responded that the election bill isn’t a fantasy but “a plan to avoid a nightmare — one that’s coming soon unless we act.”

Senate Republicans agreed to take up the voting bill earlier this year, in part after leaders privately reassured wary GOP senators that the debate wouldn’t result in an attempt to skirt the 60-vote filibuster. But the weekslong debate failed to break the stalemate on the bill, and Senate Republicans ultimately placed it on the back burner as other legislative deadlines piled up.

Conservatives, however, hadn’t forgotten about the bill, and now they want the Senate to continue to vote on it.

Scott — who came in third in the leadership contest Thune won after the 2024 election— sent a letter to his fellow Senate Republicans Monday, a copy of which was obtained by Blue Light News, saying that he wanted to have “robust conversations” this week about what the party should be focused on before the midterms. That, he said, should include voting on the SAVE America Act or narrower voter ID legislation.

“We need to make a clear distinction as to who the good guys are and who the bad guys are,” Scott wrote in the letter. “We need to show voters that we are listening to them and will fight for their priorities whether any Democrats vote with us or not.”

Congress

Senate passes housing affordability bill

Published

7 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate on Monday overwhelmingly passed a long-awaited bipartisan housing bill, which is expected to set the legislation on a glide path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature as soon as this week.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed 85-5 and contains almost 60 individual provisions, aims to tackle housing affordability and boost housing supply and homeownership. Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) voted “no.”

The legislation now moves on to the House, which could take up the bill for final passage as soon as Tuesday.

The legislation has become a pillar of Congress’ overall response to affordability concerns that have emerged as a key issue this midterm election year.

Despite broad, bipartisan support for the bill in both the House and Senate, the two chambers went back and forth on the legislation for months. Primary friction points developed over language establishing new restrictions on large Wall Street investors purchasing single-family homes, a ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a digital currency and a slate of community banking deregulation initiatives, among other measures.

The bill was able to move forward last week after the four lawmakers leading the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement. The White House also announced support for the final version of the bill, which contains Trump’s top priority of limiting Wall Street’s footprint in the housing market.