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{"id":26342,"date":"2026-07-23T12:03:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T12:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-house-gop-budget-faces-senate-reality-check\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T12:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T12:03:39","slug":"capitol-agenda-house-gop-budget-faces-senate-reality-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-house-gop-budget-faces-senate-reality-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: House GOP budget faces Senate reality check"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson successfully muscled Republicans\u2019 Recon 3.0 ball into Senate Majority Leader John Thune\u2019s court.<\/p>\n<p>GOP Senators aren\u2019t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/22\/john-thune-budget-reconciliation-trump-01009256\" target=\"_blank\">exactly thrilled to have it there<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think Senator Thune\u2019s going to take it up,\u201d Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>GOP senators are likely to face a wave of pressure from the White House and House Republicans to move quickly and advance <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/22\/house-adopts-budget-framework-for-95b-party-line-package-01008630\" target=\"_blank\">their budget resolution<\/a> before August recess \u2014 the first step necessary to pass another party-line spending bill. But Thune has been frank about the rocky road the effort faces and careful not to guarantee he\u2019ll be successful \u2014 before recess or ever.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the obstacles he faces:<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 GOVERNMENT FUNDING:<\/b> GOP leaders are prioritizing funding the government past its Sept. 30 deadline before any party-line reconciliation bill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur goal is to make sure we have government funded, and we want to get a continuing resolution done. \u2026That\u2019s number one,\u201d Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said in an interview.<\/p>\n<p>Thune said this week he would hold the House\u2019s budget resolution in reserve as an alternative way to fund the government if Democrats don\u2019t cooperate on passing a stopgap.<\/p>\n<p>But if government funding talks get punted to September, Republicans are also skeptical they\u2019d advance the budget resolution given the close proximity to the midterms and the politically tricky votes that arise during the reconciliation process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not a fan of pursuing reconciliation,\u201d Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, who is up for re-election, said.<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 DEFICIT HAWKS: <\/b>Several Senate Republicans \u2014 including Rick Scott, Bill Cassidy and Rand Paul \u2014 are making it clear they will want to pay for part of the bill, as the House\u2019s plan has no spending offsets.<\/p>\n<p>Thune can only lose votes from two of his members and still secure the budget blueprint\u2019s adoption, given unified opposition from Democrats. And Sen. Mitch McConnell is absent indefinitely for health reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Asked Wednesday how close he was to having the 50 votes necessary to proceed on the Senate floor, Thune quipped: \u201cGood question.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And 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 \u2014 and potentially force Republicans into politically sensitive votes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe literally have not had an organized conversation about reconciliation yet,\u201d Sen. Ron Johnson, Republicans\u2019 newly appointed Budget Committee chair, said when asked if 50 Senate Republicans were serious about wanting to do a third bill.<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 SAVE AMERICA PUSHBACK: <\/b>Senate Republicans don\u2019t believe they\u2019ll be able to get parts of Trump\u2019s priority elections legislation into the bill amid pushback from some of their own members.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s assuming the provisions would adhere to the chamber\u2019s strict rules for what can be included under the reconciliation process.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Thom Tillis warned last week that he\u2019d \u201cuse every device I have available to slow down the wheels of government\u201d if a reconciliation bill comes over from the House with components of the SAVE America Act included.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo the math,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 HOUSE DEMS LOBBY GOP ON WAR POWERS VOTE: <\/b>House Democrats are trying to convince more of their Republican counterparts to join them on an Iran <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/07\/22\/congress\/house-democrats-ready-iran-war-powers-vote-01007705\" target=\"_blank\"><u>war powers resolution<\/u><\/a> they\u2019ll force Thursday on the House floor. The House last month successfully advanced a similar measure to limit Trump\u2019s military authority in Iran with the help of four Republicans. We\u2019re now watching to see how many other Republicans may join them to back a resolution from Rep. Pramila Jayapal as strikes in the Middle East ramp up. Meanwhile in the Senate, Democrats will try to force their own Iran war powers resolution on the floor Thursday.<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 AI-LAUNCHED CYBERATTACK SPURS BIPARTISAN BILL:\u00a0<\/b>Reps. Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran are introducing one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/23\/house-ai-kill-switch-bill-unveiled-as-openai-hack-raises-alarms-01008898\" target=\"_blank\"><u>most aggressive bipartisan AI safety proposals<\/u><\/a> yet to emerge on Capitol Hill, Blue Light News scooped. The bill comes days after OpenAI disclosed the first fully autonomous breach by two of its most advanced models. The bill would empower the Department of Homeland Security to order AI companies to slow, suspend or shut down advanced AI models deemed to pose serious risks.<\/p>\n<p><i>Jordain Carney, Mia McCarthy, Riley Rogerson, Gabby Miller, Brendan Bordelon and Dana Nickel contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Mike Johnson successfully muscled Republicans\u2019 Recon 3.0 ball into Senate Majority Leader John Thune\u2019s court. GOP Senators aren\u2019t exactly thrilled to have it there. \u201cI don\u2019t think Senator Thune\u2019s going to take it up,\u201d Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Wednesday. GOP senators are likely to face a wave of pressure from the White House [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}