Getting a $95 billion budget blueprint through the House took weeks of arm twisting. Getting it through the Senate may very well be impossible.
With Speaker Mike Johnson muscling through the first step of a two-part plan for passing billions of funding for the Iran war and farm aid — and for implementing provisions of a GOP election proposal — the intraparty battle is officially now in Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s court, where the South Dakota Republican has been frank about the rocky road the effort faces and careful not to guarantee he’ll be successful.
GOP senators are likely to face a wave of pressure from House Republicans, who are leaving town this week for an extended summer recess, as well as the White House, to move quickly to advance the House’s budget resolution — necessary to draft and pass the party’s third filibuster-skirting reconciliation bill of the 119th Congress.
The White House blasted out a video Wednesday night of President Donald Trump telling supporters to “call John Thune” to demand passage of the SAVE America Act, adding that Republicans were trying to fit it into the reconciliation package.
But there’s plenty of skepticism among Republicans that they will be successful — before the midterms, or ever. Fiscal hawks are demanding offsets, while defense hawks and farm-state Republicans want more spending for their priorities.
“I don’t think Senator Thune’s going to take it up,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters Wednesday.
And attempting to pass another party-line package could end up forcing vulnerable incumbents to walk the plank on any number of politically tricky votes just months before the elections — a scenario many want to avoid.
Complicating things even further is that, with Sen. Mitch McConnell absent indefinitely for health reasons, Thune can only lose two of his members and still secure the budget blueprint’s adoption, given unified opposition from Democrats. This reality left several Republicans questioning whether the whole effort was DOA before the measure could formally reach the Senate.
Outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), in an interview, pointed to McConnell’s absence and the pushback from corners of the conference, adding, “I don’t know whether the votes are [there] for a reconciliation bill in the Senate.”
The Senate will be in town for two more weeks before they leave for their own August recess, and GOP leaders are not at this point committing to trying to advance the resolution before they break for the month. Instead, Thune this week said he would hold the budget resolution in reserve until the government is funded ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown.
But if they punt it until the fall, Republicans are also skeptical they would advance the budget resolution when they return in September given the even closer proximity of the midterms, according to two people granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Asked Wednesday how close he was to having the 50 votes necessary to proceed on the Senate floor, Thune quipped: “Good question.”
Instead, Senate GOP leaders are focused, for now, on trying to get the government funded before the shutdown deadline, with ongoing bipartisan talks in the Senate around a possible deal for moving a short-term continuing resolution.
“Our goal is to make sure we have government funded, and we want to get a continuing resolution done. …That’s number one,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said in an interview.
As for moving a budget resolution, the Wyoming Republican said that many GOP senators were still waiting to see the details.
“The speaker has said that what they would send would be irresistible to the Senate, and I think a lot of us want to see exactly what they’re sending, if anything is for or not, and what’s in it,” Barrasso said shortly before the House successfully adopted its proposal.
But Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Republicans’ newly appointed Budget Committee chair, warned in an interview that he believes that the Senate needs to adopt a budget resolution before leaving town or they won’t be able to get a third reconciliation bill done at all.
“If we’re serious about a reconciliation package we’re going to have to take the first steps before the August recess, just to give yourself any chance to do it before the end of the year,” Johnson said.
But pressed if he thought that 50 Senate Republicans were serious about wanting to do a third bill, Johnson said, “We literally have not had an organized conversation about reconciliation yet.”
The lackluster response toward the House’s budget blueprint among many Senate Republicans comes after House Republicans and Trump officials largely took the lead in drafting the resolution. Senate Republicans have kvetched privately for weeks that they view the House effort as a midterm messaging exercise rather than a sincere attempt to legislate given the lack of cross-chamber coordination.
The speaker declined to comment when asked Wednesday if he had talked to Thune about the process from here: “I’m not answering any questions right now.”
Thune, who meets with Johnson weekly when the two chambers are both in session, hasn’t completely closed the door to making a third run at a reconciliation bill — but he questioned last week, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”
He added Tuesday that while he thought most Republicans supported military funding, “there are some concerns about whether it will be offset, about whether it will be paid for. There are concerns … about, ‘is it enough?’”
Several Senate GOP deficit hawks — including Rick Scott of Florida, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky — are making it clear they will want to pay for part of the bill; the House’s plan would have no new offsets. But Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), whose panel would likely be tapped in to come up with ways to find savin`gs, said in an interview that “I’m not engaged in that right now.”
The push for expanding a third reconciliation bill to incorporate more pay-fors comes as there’s already concern among Senate Republicans that including the farm assistance, which involves the Agriculture Committee, risks letting Democrats force votes on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other politically sensitive issues just months before the midterms.
If Senate Republicans ask committees to look for ways to pay for the new spending, that could balloon the debate into a much larger fight about taxes, health care and other issues.
One GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they were “skeptical” the Senate would advance a third reconciliation bill because some GOP colleagues “fear taking vote-a-rama votes right before the election.”
Plus, Republicans already don’t believe they will be able to get Trump’s main priority — parts of the SAVE America Act — into the bill amid pushback from some of their own members, let alone whether the provisions would adhere to the chamber’s strict rules for what can be included under the reconciliation process.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who isn’t seeking reelection, warned from the Senate floor last week that he would “use every device I have available to slow down the wheels of government” if a reconciliation bill comes over from the House with components of the SAVE America Act included.
“Do the math,” he added.
And then there are the Senate appropriators, who are not sold on doing a third reconciliation bill that could eat away at the power of their committee.
“I have made it very clear that I think we’re going to need a 60-day CR,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection in November. “I’m not a fan of pursuing reconciliation.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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