Congress
Mike Johnson’s budget blueprint faces Senate GOP buzzsaw
Getting a $95 billion budget blueprint through the House took weeks of arm twisting. Getting it through the Senate may very well be impossible.
With Speaker Mike Johnson muscling through the first step of a two-part plan for passing billions of funding for the Iran war and farm aid — and for implementing provisions of a GOP election proposal — the intraparty battle is officially now in Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s court, where the South Dakota Republican has been frank about the rocky road the effort faces and careful not to guarantee he’ll be successful.
GOP senators are likely to face a wave of pressure from House Republicans, who are leaving town this week for an extended summer recess, as well as the White House, to move quickly to advance the House’s budget resolution — necessary to draft and pass the party’s third filibuster-skirting reconciliation bill of the 119th Congress.
The White House blasted out a video Wednesday night of President Donald Trump telling supporters to “call John Thune” to demand passage of the SAVE America Act, adding that Republicans were trying to fit it into the reconciliation package.
But there’s plenty of skepticism among Republicans that they will be successful — before the midterms, or ever. Fiscal hawks are demanding offsets, while defense hawks and farm-state Republicans want more spending for their priorities.
“I don’t think Senator Thune’s going to take it up,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters Wednesday.
And attempting to pass another party-line package could end up forcing vulnerable incumbents to walk the plank on any number of politically tricky votes just months before the elections — a scenario many want to avoid.
Complicating things even further is that, with Sen. Mitch McConnell absent indefinitely for health reasons, Thune can only lose two of his members and still secure the budget blueprint’s adoption, given unified opposition from Democrats. This reality left several Republicans questioning whether the whole effort was DOA before the measure could formally reach the Senate.
Outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), in an interview, pointed to McConnell’s absence and the pushback from corners of the conference, adding, “I don’t know whether the votes are [there] for a reconciliation bill in the Senate.”
The Senate will be in town for two more weeks before they leave for their own August recess, and GOP leaders are not at this point committing to trying to advance the resolution before they break for the month. Instead, Thune this week said he would hold the budget resolution in reserve until the government is funded ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown.
But if they punt it until the fall, Republicans are also skeptical they would advance the budget resolution when they return in September given the even closer proximity of the midterms, according to two people granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Asked Wednesday how close he was to having the 50 votes necessary to proceed on the Senate floor, Thune quipped: “Good question.”
Instead, Senate GOP leaders are focused, for now, on trying to get the government funded before the shutdown deadline, with ongoing bipartisan talks in the Senate around a possible deal for moving a short-term continuing resolution.
“Our goal is to make sure we have government funded, and we want to get a continuing resolution done. …That’s number one,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said in an interview.
As for moving a budget resolution, the Wyoming Republican said that many GOP senators were still waiting to see the details.
“The speaker has said that what they would send would be irresistible to the Senate, and I think a lot of us want to see exactly what they’re sending, if anything is for or not, and what’s in it,” Barrasso said shortly before the House successfully adopted its proposal.
But Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Republicans’ newly appointed Budget Committee chair, warned in an interview that he believes that the Senate needs to adopt a budget resolution before leaving town or they won’t be able to get a third reconciliation bill done at all.
“If we’re serious about a reconciliation package we’re going to have to take the first steps before the August recess, just to give yourself any chance to do it before the end of the year,” Johnson said.
But pressed if he thought that 50 Senate Republicans were serious about wanting to do a third bill, Johnson said, “We literally have not had an organized conversation about reconciliation yet.”
The lackluster response toward the House’s budget blueprint among many Senate Republicans comes after House Republicans and Trump officials largely took the lead in drafting the resolution. Senate Republicans have kvetched privately for weeks that they view the House effort as a midterm messaging exercise rather than a sincere attempt to legislate given the lack of cross-chamber coordination.
The speaker declined to comment when asked Wednesday if he had talked to Thune about the process from here: “I’m not answering any questions right now.”
Thune, who meets with Johnson weekly when the two chambers are both in session, hasn’t completely closed the door to making a third run at a reconciliation bill — but he questioned last week, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”
He added Tuesday that while he thought most Republicans supported military funding, “there are some concerns about whether it will be offset, about whether it will be paid for. There are concerns … about, ‘is it enough?’”
Several Senate GOP deficit hawks — including Rick Scott of Florida, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky — are making it clear they will want to pay for part of the bill; the House’s plan would have no new offsets. But Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), whose panel would likely be tapped in to come up with ways to find savin`gs, said in an interview that “I’m not engaged in that right now.”
The push for expanding a third reconciliation bill to incorporate more pay-fors comes as there’s already concern among Senate Republicans that including the farm assistance, which involves the Agriculture Committee, risks letting Democrats force votes on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other politically sensitive issues just months before the midterms.
If Senate Republicans ask committees to look for ways to pay for the new spending, that could balloon the debate into a much larger fight about taxes, health care and other issues.
One GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they were “skeptical” the Senate would advance a third reconciliation bill because some GOP colleagues “fear taking vote-a-rama votes right before the election.”
Plus, Republicans already don’t believe they will be able to get Trump’s main priority — parts of the SAVE America Act — into the bill amid pushback from some of their own members, let alone whether the provisions would adhere to the chamber’s strict rules for what can be included under the reconciliation process.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who isn’t seeking reelection, warned from the Senate floor last week that he would “use every device I have available to slow down the wheels of government” if a reconciliation bill comes over from the House with components of the SAVE America Act included.
“Do the math,” he added.
And then there are the Senate appropriators, who are not sold on doing a third reconciliation bill that could eat away at the power of their committee.
“I have made it very clear that I think we’re going to need a 60-day CR,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection in November. “I’m not a fan of pursuing reconciliation.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Members of Congress are confronting a grim reality: They are ill-equipped to rein in advanced artificial intelligence that one expert warns could “kill us all” by the end of the decade.
A viral social media post this week from ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon cautioned that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” as they race to develop superintelligent models — prompting alarm from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and new calls to action.
In conversations with Blue Light News throughout the day Wednesday, more than a dozen lawmakers and aides from both parties said they were hopeful Congress would start taking the issue seriously. By Wednesday evening, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, was pledging to “work with Congress” to implement “mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation.”
But many also conceded that Congress is currently sleepwalking into a crisis, far from ready to tackle the stakes of the moment in light of both philosophical differences and intractable partisan politicking.
“I think we’re finally hitting a tipping point,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who co-chairs the House AI Caucus, said in an interview. “I’m just so grateful that the whole world is finally paying attention … and now the question is, what do we do?”
Mounting worries inside the tech industry about a looming AI apocalypse are beginning to resonate with more members of Congress. Building on the panic seven weeks ago when hundreds of OpenAI-generated “agents” went rogue and hacked another AI platform, Hugging Face, lawmakers Wednesday called for radical action in the immediate aftermath of Coxon’s X posts late Tuesday night.
“There’s broad consensus — and in speaking with the AI companies directly, they want a regulatory framework,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a vulnerable moderate incumbent who has introduced bipartisan AI safety legislation, said Wednesday.
He called it “one of the biggest issues that Congress has to tackle over the next two years.”
It’s far from certain this desire to make progress on the issue will translate into meaningful legislative activity — and certainly not before the end of the year, with some lawmakers questioning whether their colleagues take the matter seriously or fully understand how the technology even works.
Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo of California, who leads AI policy for the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said in an interview his team recently struggled to convince other members to attend a series of events at the Library of Congress that featured OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
“There have been serious conversations among a small number of us, and we need that number to be larger. There is a percentage of my colleagues who are still trying to spell AI,” Liccardo said, adding, “we need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully. And I know that is not going to happen overnight.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), who introduced a bill this summer to create an AI “kill switch” with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), said in an interview he thought efforts to put checks on advanced models would be a priority in the next Congress. Quicker action, he agreed, would be a heavy lift.
“The number of days that we have left between the election and the end of the year is going to be very tough to educate members and then move a meaningful bill,” he said. “The broad scope of members on both sides of the aisle are trying to get caught up.”
There’s also not yet consensus on the appropriate reaction and policy response to the threat posed by superintelligence. No committee in either chamber has considered a substantive proposal to put guardrails on AI development amid disagreements over how aggressive the federal government should be in regulating the private sector and stifling innovation.
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who convened a markup of AI-adjacent bills in August that steered clear of addressing safety regulations, said in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday that the new warnings were “highly concerning” and endorsed passing legislation to prevent “catastrophic risk.”
He pointed to a pending bipartisan bill from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that is expected to represent a more targeted approach than a version of the legislation that advanced out of the Commerce Committee in the previous Congress.
Klobuchar and Thune, however, have provided no timetable for when their new measure might be formally introduced. Thune’s office did not respond to a request for comment, while Klobuchar in a statement said only that she would “continue to work toward a bipartisan agreement on legislation for commonsense guardrails to address the risks posed by AI systems,” while adding, “it’s clear we need to act now and not wait.”
Across the Capitol, House Democrats made especially clear in the aftermath of Coxon’s X posts that they will seek to move quickly if they win the majority in November, with some now discussing whether to establish a select committee on AI.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries convened a Democrat-only AI commission this term to formulate policy recommendations after Speaker Mike Johnson declined to reconstitute a bipartisan AI taskforce, and co-chair Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) projected confidence Wednesday the group’s forthcoming report would pave the way for meaningful legislative action on AI safety.
Passing AI safety legislation will require buy-in from Republicans, however — and Gottheimer, asked if Congress is moving fast enough, blamed GOP leaders for lack of momentum.
“What you’re really asking me is if the Republican leadership is working fast enough on this, right? Because they’re the ones who control the agenda,” he said. “I think you’ve seen a lot of action out of members of Congress. I think our commission has been incredibly active.”
Other Democrats joined Gottheimer in blaming Republicans for slow-walking legislation.
“It only would take one phone call from the speaker to say, ‘I want five Democrats and five Republicans in a room, and I want them to emerge from that room next week with legislation that we can bring to committee and then bring to the floor,’” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “That’s it.”
Spokespeople for Johnson and Jeffries did not return requests for comment.
Even if Democrats take back gavels after the midterms, they, too, lack a clear plan to address the growing threat of unchecked AI. Progressive leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), are advocating for a ban on superintelligence — a proposal that more moderate Democrats claim has no viable path to passage.
“Bernie Sanders,” said Gottheimer, “wants to put it in the box and throw it away, but that’s not living in reality. I think we need a reasonable, smart, commonsense approach that’s realistic but also sets up mandatory rules of the road — legislative rules of the road.”
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) brokered a bipartisan safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) that the two lawmakers have pitched as a consensus proposal, but it has so far failed to win the support to advance.
“You cannot just put your head in the sand on AI and say, ‘I hope it works out.’ You can’t just go in and say, ‘Government’s got the solution — they’re just going to ban it all.’ That’s just not going to work,’” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a staunch conservative who is leaving Congress at the end of the year, said in an interview. “We’re going to have to be thoughtful as leaders and actually have some friggin’ leadership.”
Owen Dahlkamp, Gabby Miller, Katherine Long, Mia McCarthy and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) plans to seek the top GOP spot on the Judiciary Committee, a spokesperson said. The announcement came soon after POLITICO reported that the current chair, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), does not intend to seek a fourth term leading Republicans on the panel. Lee, who is seeking her third term in November, is well down the committee’s seniority list but could make a case to the House GOP steering committee that she is best equipped to lead the key panel as a former state judge.
DALLAS — Rep. Jim Jordan said Wednesday he plans to end his eight-year run leading Republicans on two of the House’s most prominent committees after this Congress, raising fresh questions about what comes next for the veteran Ohio lawmaker.
Jordan, 62, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention that he has no plans to seek a waiver of the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders to retain the top spot on the Judiciary Committee.
Nor, he said, would he seek to return to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. He previously served as ranking member from 2019 to 2020, when he took the GOP reins at Judiciary, and has at least two terms of eligibility remaining there.
“No, I don’t plan to do that,” Jordan said. “There’s other people who are very interested in Oversight.”
Jordan could have requested a waiver from the House Republican Steering Committee, and several other sitting GOP chairs — including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — are expected to do just that. He brushed off questions about why we would not join others in seeking to keep the coveted gavel overseeing the Justice Department, immigration law and other high-profile matters.
“I’m just not going to do it,” he said.
The decision is likely to stoke speculation about another potential leadership run for Jordan, who is seeking his 11th term this fall. He unsuccessfully sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 ouster, and there has been open chatter in recent months that he is quietly setting the grounds to make another run at the top job.
After flatly denying plans to retain a committee gavel, Jordan was far less direct in addressing other questions about his future in the House.
“I’m focused on one thing, one thing only: winning,” he said. “If the left wins, where they want to take the country is very, very scary.”
Jordan, for instance, did not rule out running against Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel if Republicans hold onto House majority this fall.
“As I said, I’m focused on winning. We got to win,” he said when asked if he could challenge Johnson, adding “that’s why I’ve been … in 15 different states, and so we just keep going to help our colleagues and candidates.”
Jordan only serves on the Judiciary and Oversight committees, and it is rare for veteran Republican members who are term-limited out of committee leadership posts to stick around as back-benchers in the House.
Jordan did not criticize his fellow chairs who are seeking waivers: “They want a waiver, that’s fine. It’s been granted in the past, and sometimes they get them, sometimes they don’t,” he said, noting it was “up to the conference and the steering committee.”
Asked if he would stay in Congress without a committee or conference leadership position, he noted he is running for reelection: “I’m going to go represent the people in the 4th District.”
Asked a final time what’s next for his decadeslong political career, Jordan chuckled and went through his plans for the day.
“I got like three more interviews,” Jordan said. “And then I’m going to go sit down in that suite, and we’ve got to have some popcorn and watch the speeches. I think that’s what’s next for me.”
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