Congress

Senate Republicans in no hurry to deliver Trump’s next reconciliation bill

Published

3 months ago

June 18, 2026

President Donald Trump is calling for Republicans to pass a $350 billion bill to fund the military while notching conservative policy victories — and GOP senators aren’t exactly scurrying to action.

House Republican leaders and committee chairs have been meeting for weeks about what to include in a new party-line reconciliation package. Speaker Mike Johnson has also had conversations about the House’s vision with Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

But the Senate has taken no concrete steps toward advancing a bill, and GOP senators and aides said this week it was becoming clear any “Reconciliation 3.0” would be a House-led effort. Multiple Senate Republicans — including members of leadership — say they don’t currently see a path that could marshall 50 votes behind such a measure on their side of the Capitol just months before the midterms.

“Everybody has a different concept of what they want, which is going to be the problem,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview this week.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said a third bill “doesn’t look to me like it’s got a lot of life in it,” while Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) separately warned that if his party was going to pass a third reconciliation bill, Republicans need to “saddle up and ride hard, because we’re running out of time.”

“You don’t have to be a senior at Cal Tech to know that the closer you get to the midterms, the harder it is to get anything done around here,” Kennedy added.

Republicans in the Senate aren’t entirely ruling out coalescing behind a plan, knowing they would risk sparking Trump’s wrath if they do. But they’re airing plenty of doubts, and that pessimism — combined with a lack of clear movement toward assembling policy priorities and satisfactory pay-fors — doesn’t bode well for the GOP’s ability to deliver on the president’s demands.

A handful of Senate Republicans have been going through some of the motions. Cornyn, Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming and Budget Chair Lindsey Graham of South Carolina met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week to discuss using reconciliation to bolster the Pentagon’s budget amid the ongoing conflict with Iran.

Graham, after his meeting with Hegseth, said in an X post that he will be working with Senate leaders, Budget Committee Republicans and the administration “to see if we can get this process moving as expeditiously as possible.”

He added, “In my view, time is of the essence.”

But three Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee said there was no movement toward drafting a budget resolution — a prerequisite for unlocking the filibuster-skirting power of another reconciliation bill — nor have they received details on a timeline from Graham.

In an interview Monday, Graham said only, “I love reconciliation; I want it to never end.”

The party-line bill currently under discussion would be the third one passed in this Congress, following on last year’s $4.5 trillion tax-cuts-focused megabill and the $70 billion immigration enforcement funding package finalized earlier this month — hence “Reconciliation 3.0.”

Barrasso said Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) has had conversations on potential ways to help pay for a third reconciliation package through changes to the tax code, but that claim appeared to come as a surprise to Crapo.

“I would like to do a Reconciliation Three, but we are not crafting one or anything like that,” Crapo said in an interview earlier this week. “I mean, we are always discussing tax policy.”

Their posture is being influenced by the math within their own conference: With a 53-seat majority, Thune can only afford to lose three GOP senators with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — another senior GOP appropriator who is currently hospitalized — both predicted during a recent hearing that a third reconciliation bill would not happen. Collins separately told reporters “it would be very difficult to get a third reconciliation bill approved.”

But with the annual bipartisan appropriations process collapsing in the Senate, some Republicans see reconciliation as the only path forward to fund certain programs — as the GOP did with “Reconciliation 2.0” that funded Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the duration of Trump’s term.

Cornyn said appropriators were skeptical of a third reconciliation bill because “it basically carves them out of the process.” But he added, “I don’t think there’s any other way to deal with things like defense spending.”

Meanwhile, Senate GOP fiscal hawks could also blow up the process by demanding pay-fors for Trump’s military funding request in the form of cuts to health care services. It’s a reality Thune acknowledged as he recently explained the challenges of advancing another reconciliation bill, noting that while most Republicans would unite around defense spending, “it certainly wouldn’t be limited to just that.”

“You’d have to have it offset and paid for,” Thune continued, “which implicates other committees of jurisdiction and creates unique challenges in terms of the vote count here in the Senate.”

Republican leaders are especially fearful of any scenario where vulnerable incumbents will have to take difficult votes related to health care so close to the elections. This conversation is also playing out in the House, where Republican leaders have signaled an interest in pursuing another reconciliation bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in new defense spending that would likely be offset by crackdowns on alleged fraud in social services programs.

Moderates are balking at many of the proposals on the table — frustrating House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who said last week he could save hundreds of billions of dollars by cracking down on “fraud” across multiple social safety net programs if only his colleagues would join him.

“We have more than enough resources in savings … That I can tell you,” Arrington said in an interview.

One House Republican who was granted anonymity to speak freely said nobody is taking the current slate of offset recommendations seriously: “It’s fake pay-fors for defense spending no one has fully agreed to and no meaningful reforms.”

Still, House GOP leaders are expected to forge ahead with plans to unveil more of their framework after the chamber returns from recess next week. Some members want to adopt a budget blueprint and also pass the bill out of the House before the August break — a timeline many Republicans consider highly ambitious and can’t happen unless Senate Republicans are on board.

In the meantime, Barrasso is tempering expectations. He told reporters this week that while conversations are ongoing around Reconciliation 3.0, “the important thing is that we got Reconciliation 2.0 done.”

Thune also isn’t making any promises.

“As I said before on another reconciliation bill, you’ve got to have something that gets 50 and 218,” he told reporters, “and I’m not sure exactly at this point what that is.”

Meredith Lee Hill, Jennifer Scholtes and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Gallego grades Democrats on their midterm messaging to men

Published

2 hours ago

September 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats are finally catching on to how to talk to young male voters in the lead-up to the midterms, but the party can still up its game, one battleground senator and potential 2028er said Friday.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) has been one of his party’s most outspoken critics on its handling of outreach to young men, who swung right and helped deliver the White House and both chambers of Congress to Republicans in 2024.

The party is now “definitely moving in the right direction,” Gallego said Friday.

“Like back in the day, I was like the only one,” putting out positions on men, Gallego said at a Washington event on young American men. “Now, like, it seems like everyone every week is coming out with a new position, new idea, which is great.”

Gallego has criticized Democrat’s failure to highlight mens’ struggles and their tendency to over-police mens’ ideas. But there are signs the political winds have shifted in his party’s favor.

A new Cygnal poll released with the event of men ages 18-30 who say they’re the most determined to vote revealed Democrats’ generic ballot lead over Republicans at 57%-40%, Blue Light News reported. The poll also said nearly 40 percent of respondents said they feel their lives are off track.

“We need to take the opportunity to invest in that portion of this country, to say that we care about them and actually try to change the trajectory of what’s happening with men in this country,” Gallego said at the symposium.

Still, the path for specific legislation targeting the needs of this demographic faces an incredibly tight calendar this Congress and is uncertain in the political landscape of next year.

A proposal from Gallego and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to establish a men’s health office within the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, has not advanced. Nor has bipartisan legislation from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who also spoke at the event, targeting education outcomes, college investment transparency and dyslexic student support.

Congress

Bipartisan Russia hawks urge Trump to pull Putin invite to G20 summit

Published

2 hours ago

September 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A bipartisan group of 14 senators urged President Donald Trump to rescind his invitation for Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the Group of 20 summit in Miami in December.

The letter, whose bipartisan signers were led by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the invitation on Wednesday.

“President Putin bears sole responsibility for launching Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine,” the senators wrote in the letter. “Allowing him to participate in a G20 Summit in the United States raises serious concerns about legitimizing and normalizing a government that continues to attack Ukrainian civilian targets every day.”

The senators also noted that the U.S. has sanctioned Putin, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and others in the Russian delegation. If the U.S. does not join in isolating Russia on the world stage, Putin may not feel motivated to pursue a ceasefire and further negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, they wrote.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Friday.

The letter surfaced following Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington that concluded Friday.

During the summit, Xi said he will meet with Trump two more times this year, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November and again at the G20 summit. Trump subsequently confirmed on social media that he will attend the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China.

Putin is also set to attend the APEC summit in China, and there were talks of a trilateral meeting there, Reuters reported earlier this month.

The Russian presidential press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter or whether Putin has accepted Trump’s invitation.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Dems weigh doing Husted a solid

Published

11 hours ago

September 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Democrats have a decision to make about whether to grant a political favor to one of their most vulnerable Republican colleagues.

GOP leaders are expected to set up an initial vote Wednesday on legislation that would advise states on ensuring data centers pay for all their energy costs and grid updates. Democrats may discuss the matter at a weekly party lunch Tuesday, but so far haven’t had a caucus-wide conversation yet, several senators said in interviews.

The bill is being championed by Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted — who is facing a tough election bid against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. The measure easily passed the House last week with 206 Democratic votes, but campaign-season politics are making action trickier for the party in the Senate.

On one hand, voting to start debate on the bill could help keep Republicans off the campaign trail even longer and insulate Democrats against charges of politically motivated obstructionism.

On the other hand, a successful procedural vote could kick off an unpredictable amendment process and — as some Democrats see it — risk helping GOP leaders bail out an embattled candidate who has been inundated with data-center-themed campaign attacks.

“It’s an effort to rescue Husted’s campaign,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said in an interview, even as he acknowledged that he himself hasn’t yet made a call on how to vote.

Most in the party have yet to decide whether to lend their support, according to interviews with more than a dozen Senate Democrats and aides.

That includes in-cycle Jon Ossoff and known bipartisan dealmakers such as Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Warner, who all said Thursday they hadn’t made up their minds.

Sen. Peter Welch is so far the only Democrat to say he will support Husted’s bill, though he, like other Democrats, said “the bill didn’t go far enough.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, the Democrats’ deputy whip, said in an interview Thursday he found the bill “kind of weak” but that he didn’t have an announcement about whether party leaders would whip against it.

Two GOP senators, granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said that Republicans privately don’t expect the bill to get the votes needed to ultimately pass.

But Husted is keeping the pressure on Democrats publicly.

“They say they’re for more affordability,” he said. “This is a chance for everybody to prove it.”

What else we’re watching:

— JOHNSON, TRUMP SET MEETING WITH AI EXECS —- Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump will meet at the White House Tuesday with the executives of top artificial intelligence companies. Congress is under increasing pressure to put federal guardrails on AI development, but House GOP leaders continue to resist any major legislative action to address concerns. The speaker and president were in attendance at the state dinner Thursday night in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, as were OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. It was not immediately clear which of these executives would be invited to next week’s meeting, and who will be participating.

— SENATE GOP’S NOMS IN LIMBO: Senate Republicans’ hopes of getting several of Trump’s key nominees confirmed before they leave for midterm campaigning are still in limbo. The main GOP sticking point is Sen. Kevin Cramer’s blanket hold on nominations — including but not limited to Keith Sonderling for labor secretary — “pending a repeal of the Biden setback rule on fish and wildlife easements” in his state, the North Dakota Republican told Blue Light News. After weeks of a complete hold, Cramer lifted his blockade on some nominees after the Trump administration committed to reevaluating some of the Fish and Wildlife Service easements that restrict farming.

Jordain Carney, Amelia Davidson, Nico Portuondo, Mia McCarthy, Sophia Cai and Miranda Willson contributed to this report.