Congress

John Kennedy is trying to get Trump to get serious about the debt limit

Published

1 year ago

March 11, 2025

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has deputized a folksy Louisiana lawmaker known for his blunt political observations and creative analogies to take the lead in convincing President Donald Trump to develop a strategy for raising the debt limit later this year.

That Senate envoy, Sen. John Neely Kennedy, says Trump isn’t ready to focus just yet — and that attention deficit could have reverberations across the global economy.

Kennedy confirmed in an interview that Thune asked him a few weeks ago to lead shuttle diplomacy with Trump about the GOP’s options for preventing the U.S. from defaulting on its $36 trillion-and-counting debt later this year. Since then, Kennedy said, he has asked Trump and Vice President JD Vance “point blank” to start thinking about a plan for lifting the nation’s borrowing cap to head off a default — a breach that top economists predict would irreparably mar America’s reputation as a reliable borrower.

“I’ve done it publicly and privately, and it’s clear to me that the president is not ready to focus that much on the debt limit,” Kennedy said about his discussions with Trump.

“I think the president is clearly aggravated having to deal with it,” Kennedy, a member of the Senate Banking and Budget committees, continued. “And I don’t blame him. His attitude is: ‘Why didn’t y’all fix this before I took office?’”

Trump asked Congress to include a debt ceiling increase in its year-end government funding package in December, but dozens of House Republicans balked at the idea, leaving the unfinished business for the new president.

Thune, in a brief interview Monday, called Kennedy a “good advocate” in the debt limit discussions and said that several other Republicans are also involved in trying to unite the White House and GOP lawmakers around a plan.

A White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called Trump a “master dealmaker” who is “always engaged in negotiations on Capitol Hill.”

But Senate Republicans have been pressing Trump since January to back a debt limit strategy, noting that time is of the essence. The day before the president was inaugurated, he sat down with Senate Republicans for a “very fulsome” discussion and spent 20 minutes talking about the debt limit, according to Kennedy.

Yet Kennedy said he wasn’t encouraged by Trump’s remarks: “I don’t have the slightest idea what he said. He was splendid in his evasiveness. And that’s when I concluded back then, and in subsequent conversations: I concluded that he’s not ready to focus on it yet.”

Congress is still waiting for the Treasury Department to issue a prediction for when the U.S. could default on its debt, with top lawmakers operating under the assumption that the so-called X-date is likely to hit sometime between June and August.

If tax receipts come in lower than expected this spring, Congress could face the fiscal cliff with little warning, as it did in 2023. So Senate GOP leaders are anxious for Trump to endorse some sort of plan — especially as they decide whether to raise the nation’s borrowing cap as part of the massive domestic policy package they hope to pass along party lines later this year.

If Trump and GOP leaders seek to raise the debt limit through that process, known as reconciliation, they would need to make the hard sell to fiscal conservatives demanding steep spending cuts in return — and then potentially deliver a similarly forceful pitch to more moderate lawmakers who could be spooked by the political ramifications of those reductions.

One of the deficit hawks, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), said the “White House is very well aware” of his demand for returning to pre-pandemic spending levels as a condition of raising the debt limit.

“I know the president doesn’t like this issue. But he has to understand: There are those of us who realize that that’s the only leverage we have to bring down spending, and we don’t want to give up that leverage,” Johnson said in an interview.

House Republicans have already provided for a $4 trillion increase in the U.S. borrowing cap in their budget framework. If that gambit falters, GOP leaders will have to seek Democratic votes to avert a debt default outside the reconciliation process, opening up negotiations that could lead to higher government funding levels or other concessions to the minority party.

Unlike the House Republican budget, the Senate’s budget framework does not allow for raising the debt limit. But many Senate Republicans now endorse the idea of including such language as they decide their next steps toward actually writing their sweeping package of tax cuts and energy policy, along with border security and defense spending increases.

“The only question is whether we can get the votes in both the House and Senate to do it in reconciliation. Right now, that’s the plan,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who is close with Thune, said in a brief interview.

Asked if Senate Republicans have the support for keeping a debt ceiling increase in the reconciliation plan, Hoeven quipped: “If you could find that out and let us know, that would be really helpful, because that’s the question.”

Across the Capitol, several senior House Republicans have also privately acknowledged that they will need a backup plan if they can’t whip enough support for a party-line package that raises the borrowing limit.

Speaker Mike Johnson, Thune and top congressional tax writers are now meeting weekly with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss the broader reconciliation effort.

“There are other potential vehicles — any spending bill is an option,” Thune said. Asked about the possibility of pairing it with a disaster aid package — another must-pass item on the 2025 legislative agenda — he added, “We’ll see.”

One thing is clear: There’s no real discussion of including a debt limit increase on the most pressing vehicle — the stopgap spending bill that is expected to move through Congress this week.

Johnson and senior House Republicans have no other plans for the debt limit right now other than to push for it to stay in the budget plan their chamber narrowly approved two weeks ago — and they are largely miffed the Senate is contemplating anything else.

When billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk lunched with Senate Republicans last week the debt ceiling briefly came up in conversation, but no decision was made on a strategy.

Senate Republicans also discussed the issue during a lunch last month with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. There, Kennedy told Wiles she and Trump ought to be thinking about the best way to handle it. Wiles, Kennedy said, didn’t commit to a specific path for dealing with the debt ceiling and instead said she would talk to Trump about it.

“I just want to make sure that the president understands that if we do it outside of reconciliation, we’ve got to pay bribes,” Kennedy said about the prospect of having to strike a debt deal with Democrats. “There are two doors: Door No. 1 and door No. 2.”

Congress

Senate Republicans exclude Democrats’ food aid demand from farm bill

Published

3 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

3 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

4 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.