{"id":9856,"date":"2025-06-03T12:03:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T12:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-new-megabill-text-dropping-this-week\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T12:03:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T12:03:33","slug":"capitol-agenda-new-megabill-text-dropping-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-new-megabill-text-dropping-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: New megabill text dropping this week"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Senate committees will start rolling out their portions of the GOP megabill as soon as Tuesday, providing a first look at how Republicans in the chamber plan to address some of the House\u2019s most controversial proposals.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the draft-text timeline Blue Light News reported Monday night<\/a>, though it could change: <\/p>\n

\u2014 Armed Services plans to release its text Tuesday<\/p>\n

\u2014 Environment and Public Works is pushing for Wednesday<\/p>\n

\u2014 Commerce is aiming for Thursday<\/p>\n

\u2014 Banking is expected Friday<\/p>\n

The scheduling logic: Just as the House sequenced its megabill markups from least-to-most controversial to buy lawmakers more time to resolve their stickier policy debates, the Senate will have committees release their least-contentious draft bills first. Finance, which has jurisdiction over tax cuts and changes to Medicaid, is widely expected to be among the final Senate panels to release text, if not the last.<\/p>\n

The massive tax-and-spending package will \u201cmost likely\u201d hit the Senate floor the last full week of June, ahead of the July 4 recess, per Senate Majority Leader John Thune.<\/p>\n

It could come even sooner \u2014 but that depends on how conversations go with the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough. Committee staffers started vetting the megabill with MacDonough last week, and will continue their talks this week and next. MacDonough\u2019s job is to recommend which House-passed provisions and policy priorities must be dropped to comply with the strict rules<\/a> governing the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process.<\/p>\n

Thune signaled Monday that Republicans won\u2019t seek to override their referee<\/a> if they don\u2019t like her rulings, but said he hoped MacDonough could be convinced to greenlight inclusion of the so-called REINS Act<\/a> \u201cin some fashion.\u201d The longstanding conservative proposal would give Congress more authority to approve agency regulations.<\/p>\n

The chamber\u2019s lightning-fast turnaround nods to the weeks of behind-the-scenes work by GOP senators and their aides to prepare for the domestic policy bill\u2019s arrival from across the Capitol. It also shows the immense pressure they\u2019re under from the White House to get moving on advancing President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping legislative agenda.<\/p>\n

The president is starting to play his own hand. Trump met separately Monday at the White House with both Thune and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who wants deeper spending cuts but told Blue Light News \u201cwe all want to get a bill done.\u201d Trump also spoke by phone with Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who\u2019s pushing a return to pre-pandemic spending levels, and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)<\/a>, who\u2019s opposed to some of the Medicaid changes endorsed by the Republican House. And the president will likely meet with Thune and Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) either this week or next to talk through the details of the tax portion of the bill.<\/p>\n

One key fight to watch this week: Look to see if the Senate backs away from the House\u2019s plan to reup government auctions of federally controlled spectrum. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) has drawn a red line on it, saying Monday that \u201cwe’ll have to take out the spectrum language that’s in the bill right now. That simply is a non-starter for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we’re watching: <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 Rescissions incoming:<\/b> The White House plans to send up a package Tuesday outlining $9.4 billion in spending cuts<\/a>, asking Congress to nix current funding for NPR, PBS and foreign aid. House Republican leaders helped shape the so-called rescissions request over the last few weeks in a back-and-forth with the White House. But Senate Republicans are exploring options for amending the package.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Billy Long is back: <\/b>Senate Finance members will vote Tuesday to advance the nomination of Billy Long, Trump\u2019s pick to lead the IRS, six months after the president announced the selection. In his confirmation hearing last month<\/a>, Long sought to distance himself from his promotion of certain tribal tax credits that turned out to be nonexistent.<\/p>\n

Jordain Carney, Benjamin Guggenheim and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate committees will start rolling out their portions of the GOP megabill as soon as Tuesday, providing a first look at how Republicans in the chamber plan to address some of the House\u2019s most controversial proposals. Here\u2019s the draft-text timeline Blue Light News reported Monday night, though it could change: \u2014 Armed Services plans to […]<\/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-9856","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\/9856","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=9856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}