John Thune is stuck in between President Donald Trump’s demands and the realities of Senate math.
Thune has eight days to appease the president who wants to see the framework for a third GOP bill advance before senators break for summer recess.
But the Senate majority leader in an interview with Jordain says he doesn’t have the 50 votes needed to adopt the budget plan right now. And he’s uncertain the president would be happy with the substantially watered-down form of the election security bill — the SAVE America Act — that Trump sees as the centerpiece of the measure.
“I think the question at the end is, is that going to be satisfactory to him?” Thune said. “And so we’re still trying to figure that out.”
Around the same time, Trump was in the Oval Office insisting Thune “has the votes” to kill the Senate’s longstanding filibuster and pass the elections bill. He went on to sow doubt on whether he believed Thune was fit to lead Republicans.
“We will find out, and I will let you know,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
The White House, meanwhile, sent a number of Trump officials to lobby for Reconciliation 3.0 Wednesday, but they struggled to squash GOP senators’ skepticism about the administration’s vision.
Republicans laid out for officials the political complications of taking up the House-passed $95 billion budget resolution in their chamber. Senate Budget Chair Ron Johnson, for example, said including the SAVE America provisions in the Senate — unlike in the House — could involve more committees and open up the range of issues Democrats would be able to force politically troublesome votes on.
“I think we all hate vote-a-rama,” Johnson added. “Some people are more sensitive to the kind of votes they have to take.”
Meanwhile, some senators want more military spending than the $60 billion House Republicans laid out in their own framework.
“I think we have challenges that need to be met,” Sen. Jerry Moran said after a closed-door Senate GOP meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “The process is going to be difficult.”
The bottom line: taking up the party-line bill is a political minefield for GOP senators less than 100 days from the midterms, and Thune said the Republican-on-Republican attacks aren’t helping.
“Let’s try and win some seats in both the House and the Senate, and let’s use this issue to our advantage instead of using it to beat each other up,” Thune said.
What else we’re watching:
— BLANCHE VOTE POSTPONED: Senate Judiciary delayed plans to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general today after key GOP holdouts failed to reach an agreement with the administration on preconditions for their support. Sen. John Cornyn was explicit on the legal language he needed from Blanche to revise a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS by Wednesday afternoon to secure his vote. Sen. Thom Tillis, another member of the panel with concerns about the settlement, said he would follow Cornyn’s lead.
— SENATE STOPGAP TAKES SHAPE: Senate leaders are leaning toward a Dec. 11 shutdown deadline for the stopgap government funding patch they want to pass next week, according to two people familiar with the discussions. That’s one week later than the Dec. 4 date House Republicans put in the bare-bones version they passed last week. Top senators are still working to finalize a bipartisan agreement on their plan to keep federal agencies funded beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.
Katherine Tully-McManus, Chris Marquette and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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