Senate Republicans are warning it won’t be easy to advance the $95 billion budget resolution the House approved Wednesday — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Thursday delivered a blunt response: That’s too bad.
“They can say all day long, ‘It’s going to be hard.’ Everything’s hard. Give me a lecture about how hard things are. That’s what I do every day,” Scalise told a small group of reporters. “They’ve got to figure out a way to get it done. They have to get that bill to the president’s desk.”
Fresh off narrowly muscling the budget plan through his chamber, Scalise said he talked to President Donald Trump recently and now expects the president lean heavily on the Senate GOP to adopt the blueprint — necessary for Republicans to be able to write and pass legislation through the filibuster-skirting reconciliation process.
Their bill would fund the Iran war, farm assistance and components of the GOP election overhaul package known as the SAVE America Act — Trump’s top legislative priority, which has stalled on Capitol Hill.
“He’s going to be putting a lot of pressure” on them, Scalise said of Trump.
“Those senators are going to go home, too, and they’re hearing the same thing,” he added, referring to what Senate Republicans could confront during their upcoming lengthy summer recess.
Scalise also argued that the $10 billion dollars in the plan to advance voter ID and citizenship requirements from the SAVE America Act will be politically toxic for Senate Republicans to ignore ahead of the midterms.
“We’ve packaged ‘SAVE America’ in a number of different ways, but a reconciliation bill is the most straightforward way where the excuse of the filibuster is no longer around,” he said.
“Democrats are obstructing everything. We all know that. A reconciliation bill is the one tool that the Democrats can’t filibuster, can’t obstruct,” Scalise added.
Senate Republicans don’t expect Senate Majority Leader John Thune to move the budget resolution before the August recess. He has also signaled he could hold it until Congress reaches a deal to fund the government ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown.
But many GOP senators don’t believe they would take up the budget resolution in September either, given the close proximity of the midterms — punting the matter until after the November election, when House Republicans have already promised their members they’ll pursue a fourth reconciliation bill focused on cracking down on fraud.
In any event, Scalise’s latest comments are sure to trigger another wave of backlash among key GOP senators, where the widely held belief is that pursuing another reconciliation bill at this time is nothing but trouble.
Thune said Thursday he doesn’t currently believe a budget blueprint for a third reconciliation bill has the votes to get through the Senate. With Sen. Mitch McConnell’s ongoing absence for health reasons, Thune can only lose two of his own members given opposition from Democrats.
“I can’t count to 50 right now on a budget resolution, but we’ll see. … The priority is funding the government, and so to me, that’s the thing we’ve got to keep our eyes on,” Thune said.
Many Senate Republicans are concerned that acting on another party-line bill at this time will expose vulnerable GOP incumbents to a wave of tough votes, including about food aid access.
And Thune has also said, time and again, the SAVE America Act doesn’t have the GOP votes to pass — and enough of his members are not interested in blowing up the Senate filibuster to force it over the line. He reiterated Thursday that the GOP election bill doesn’t have the votes within the conference, saying, “the math on that hasn’t changed.”
Scalise on Thursday morning batted away concerns from Senate Republicans that the package’s $67 billion for defense is insufficient and that the $12 billion in farm aid isn’t enough to cover farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs, weather disasters and the high costs of fertilizer and fuel. He also threw cold water on threats from farm state Republicans and defense hawks in the Senate to up the amount.
“I don’t expect that to happen,” Scalise said. “And you know, what will happen in the Senate? I don’t even try to predict that. I’ve got a tough enough job getting the House to do the things we need to do. And we’re delivering and doing our job, and now the Senate has to do their job, and I’m confident they’ll do it.”
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