Republicans are hitting the gas on a new party-line policy bill. They are fully aware it might end up in the ditch.
The renewed push for budget reconciliation — spawned out of a Monday meeting between President Donald Trump and a group of GOP senators — marks the best shot Republicans have had in months to enact key agenda items without Democratic cooperation. House and Senate conservatives have clamored for a second attempt this Congress, following last summer’s tax-cuts-focused megabill, without much success.
But GOP leaders face a tall order in wrangling their thin margins and the hodgepodge of policy ideas already being pitched by their competing factions — or watching the effort collapse due to infighting.
Underscoring the massive challenge, some Republicans are stressing they aren’t committing to pass another bill under the reconciliation process — which could allow them to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate — they are just promising to give it a try.
“The odds would be like 100 percent,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview about the chances Republicans will attempt another reconciliation bill. “Now, do we pass it?”
The latest vision for a GOP reconciliation bill would build the legislation around new funding for immigration enforcement that Democrats are refusing to pass, plus parts of the SAVE America Act — the Republican elections overhaul that doesn’t have a path to passing the Senate. GOP lawmakers believe incentives for states to adopt new policies such as voter ID rules could comply with the Senate’s strict rules for reconciliation.
“I would keep it as simple as possible so it could pass,” Johnson said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview that keeping the bill narrow would help raise the odds that Republicans would be able to get something across the finish line.
“If you want to keep all of our members tight … we need to agree to the parameters and not allow scope creep,” Tillis said.
Keeping the scope of the reconciliation bill narrower would have an added political benefit for Senate Republicans — it would limit the slate of issues on which Democrats could force simple-majority votes as they try to squeeze vulnerable GOP incumbents just months before the midterms.
But there is already outright skepticism, and in some cases early signs of opposition, inside the Senate GOP. Republicans can lose up to three senators and still pass a party-line bill.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is facing a tough reelection bid, said she thought reconciliation was not a “good approach.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Budget Committee member who chairs the Republican Steering Committee, predicted it would be “very difficult” to get the votes and compared it to a “pipe dream.”
“You know me, I’m not a big fan of reconciliation,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) added when asked if she wanted to pursue a new party-line bill.
It’s not just the Senate where GOP leaders are facing an uphill battle to pass both a budget resolution — a key prerequisite for reconciliation — as well as the bill itself.
A big risk of pursuing a second reconciliation bill is House conservatives seeking to include potentially billions of dollars in cuts to the social safety net and other long-brewing proposals that will “scare the hell out of” vulnerable Republican lawmakers ahead of the midterms, according to one senior House GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.
Even House GOP chatter about trying to add in extra Pentagon funding is sparking warnings from their Senate counterparts. One GOP senator, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, predicted that a heavy injection of defense spending could “kill the whole thing.”
Several House Republicans granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics said they do not believe GOP leaders will be able to muster the multiple near-unanimous GOP votes needed to get another reconciliation bill through the House.
At a leadership meeting Tuesday, senior House Republicans voiced concerns about whether adding the SAVE America Act to a reconciliation bill would be a futile exercise, according to two people in the room.
That’s because of procedural reality: Most of the contentious elections bill won’t pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, whose guidance on the reconciliation process is typically final.
The House Freedom Caucus called the Senate GOP plan “gaslighting” Tuesday morning. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Tuesday that it’s “hard to imagine” how it could pass under the budget process.
“And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible,’” Lee added on X.
Republicans are discussing how they might induce states to implement some of the SAVE America Act’s voter ID requirements. Senate Budget Committee Republicans met Tuesday for what senators described as a meeting to “touch gloves” as members plotted how to enact ICE funding and parts of the election bill. Senate Republicans also discussed pursuing another reconciliation bill during a closed-door lunch Tuesday.
House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) separately circulated a list of proposals with key GOP offices on his side of the Capitol that would mandate or financially incentivize states to implement voter ID laws, require proof of citizenship for voter registration, share voter data with federal agencies for verification and conduct post-election audits, among other items, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.
Some of those items appeared unlikely to pass scrutiny with the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, whose rulings tend to be the final word on the reconciliation process.
GOP senators could overrule her, but Majority Leader John Thune vowed Tuesday that they would comply with her guidance. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) also batted away a question about overruling her, calling it a “hypothetical.”
But Republican leaders are otherwise being careful not to make any pronouncements about where the latest reconciliation push will end up. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said only that they are “looking at a lot of different options to see if we’ve got a consensus.”
Thune added that he would need to be “pretty sure” any proposal has the requisite 50 votes before the Senate embarked on the initial and time-consuming step of approving a budget resolution, which unlocks the reconciliation process.
“We’re just trying to make sure we keep our expectations realistic,” he said.
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