{"id":9998,"date":"2025-06-06T14:02:34","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T14:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/gop-whip-emmer-weighs-in-on-megabills-fate\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T14:02:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T14:02:34","slug":"gop-whip-emmer-weighs-in-on-megabills-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/gop-whip-emmer-weighs-in-on-megabills-fate\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Whip Emmer weighs in on megabill’s fate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer isn\u2019t concerned about the GOP megabill\u2019s fate in the Senate, despite a raft of current policy disputes in need of speedy resolution. During an exclusive interview Thursday, the Minnesota Republican was bullish about getting the massive tax and spending package to President Donald Trump\u2019s desk by July 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Senate will do their work. They’re going to send the bill back to us,\u201d Emmer said. \u201cWe are going to pass it and send it to the president’s desk. The time for talking is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

There’s one area Emmer said he hopes the Senate won\u2019t touch: the quadrupled state and local tax deduction cap carefully negotiated with blue-state Republicans in the House. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo recently said there\u2019s little appetite among his members for keeping the increase fully intact. But Emmer said he believes the Senate understands the House\u2019s more difficult math.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Thune was quoted somewhere as saying, you know, \u2018We understand it’s 51 over here and it\u2019s 218 over there.\u2019\u201d Emmer said. \u201cThat should tell you everything you need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emmer also said he believes the Republican senators who have raised concerns on the House’s Medicaid overhaul proposals \u2014 specifically Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Josh Hawley of Missouri\u2014 are \u201cgoing to be pleasantly surprised when they go through\u201d the House-passed package.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of their concerns that they thought they were going to have are just not there,\u201d Emmer insisted, adding that \u201cthere might be\u201d tweaks from across the chamber to the House’s product, but no one has flagged any \u201cmajor problems\u201d in the bill. Emmer said the only area he thinks there might be unease is about the provider tax<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A key group of senators could also hold up the bill over the House’s moves to repeal or scale back the clean-energy tax credits that were created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law. Disrupting the long-term availability of those credits could disrupt projects already underway in red districts and states. Emmer said House members are sensitive to this dynamic as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s one of the reasons why the sunsetting [of certain credits] is out at least three years, so that people can continue projects and repurpose them,\u201d said Emmer. \u201cThat was the whole concept. Whatever the Senate does with it, that’s their business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emmer weighed in, too, on Speaker Mike Johnson’s suggestion that Republicans could pursue a second megabill through the filibuster-skirting, party-line budget reconciliation process \u2014 or even a third. The majority whip didn\u2019t wave off the idea but emphasized that Congress should \u201cget the first one done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of it’s possible,\u201d Emmer said. \u201cIs it probable? We\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer isn\u2019t concerned about the GOP megabill\u2019s fate in the Senate, despite a raft of current policy disputes in need of speedy resolution. During an exclusive interview Thursday, the Minnesota Republican was bullish about getting the massive tax and spending package to President Donald Trump\u2019s desk by July 4. \u201cThe Senate […]<\/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-9998","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\/9998","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=9998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}