Ideally, the Senate would be adjourning for a five-week break in less than 24 hours.
Instead, Republican senators are still navigating what Majority Leader John Thune described as a “train wreck” as they face a pileup of legislation, key nominations and public pressure from President Donald Trump and angry conservatives to show progress on a GOP election bill Trump views as his “No. 1 priority.”
They’re heading into Thursday — when the scent of jet fumes typically starts wafting through the halls of Congress — without a deal that would let them speed up votes on a government funding bill or long-stalled Russia sanctions bill.
Meanwhile, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination is still stuck in limbo after he came to the Capitol Wednesday for a roughly hourlong meeting with two key Republican holdouts.
That said, the general outlines of a deal that would allow senators to quickly get out of Washington and onto the campaign trail has started taking shape, even as senators and aides acknowledged they might have to stick around at least a little bit longer than they’d hoped.
“Don’t kill the vibe — it’s starting to pick up,” Thune said in an interview, while cautioning that “you’re not going to be smelling those [jet fumes] anytime real soon. … We’ve obviously got, like I said, a stack of stuff to do.”
One key issue Republicans haven’t yet settled is a new party-line spending bill that would pump billions of dollars into the Pentagon, to ailing farmers and into some elections-related spending that could take some of the Trump-fueled pressure off — even as several people with knowledge of the discussions said the votes aren’t there.
Thune hasn’t formally ruled out taking up a budget blueprint for the GOP bill, saying Wednesday it was “hard to say at this point” if he had the votes. But he indicated there was progress behind the scenes toward an exit strategy that would allow Republicans to start their recess with minimal internal friction.
“There’s not clarity, but it’s getting less cloudy if you put it that way,” Thune said.
Three people granted anonymity to discuss internal discussions said that endgame would not involve the time-consuming process of advancing a budget, but instead calling up a vote related to the SAVE America Act, the Trump-backed elections bill.
Republican leaders are hoping that holding a vote on the elections proposal, at the Senate’s usual 60-vote threshold for legislation, will let them hammer Democrats as the holdup while satisfying Republicans who have been frustrated over the lack of progress and have threatened to oppose leaving town.
“We’re looking at options there,” Thune said about possible SAVE America-related votes.
He added that it “remains to be seen” if that would be enough to placate Trump-allied rabble-rousers, “but we’ve had a number of conversations now about how we get the votes people feel are necessary.”
A key MAGA ally, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, posted a social media video Wednesday thanking Thune, saying that the conversation has moved in a “favorable direction” and that Republicans were discussing “what procedural vehicle to use in order to get this thing done.”
Thune has several other obstacles to clear besides the SAVE America fight.
Senators want an agreement that would let them extend government funding into mid-December, pass a sanctions bill targeting Russia in honor of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, confirm dozens of Trump nominees, including Blanche, and start work on a bipartisan college sports bill.
The highest drama surrounds Blanche, who met Wednesday with GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Neither said afterward how they would vote on his nomination. With Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and every Democrat expected to oppose Blanche, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) out for health reasons, he will need to win support from at least one of the two.
The legislative targets have issues, too: Republicans are grappling with intraparty wrangling over hemp language included in the stopgap bill, and Democrats are working through concerns in their ranks about the sanctions bill.
They also want to know if Republicans are going to force them to take a vote on cryptocurrency legislation that many Democrats currently oppose. They are eager to avoid taking that vote ahead of the recess as bipartisan talks happen behind the scenes — especially because a failed vote could potentially fuel tens of millions of dollars of campaign spending against Democratic opponents by industry allies.
Democrats are also looking for signals from Republicans about whether they will move forward with the party-line budget plan. But it was clear by Wednesday afternoon that major obstacles remained.
One GOP senator said Wednesday evening that “there won’t be the votes to do reconciliation and that will simplify things” for the rest of the schedule.
At a Senate GOP lunch meeting, Budget Chair Ron Johnson of Wisconsin presented his ideas for the budget blueprint. It would closely mirror a version that the House advanced last month, but it would also instruct a host of new committees to help draft the bill — expanding the range of issues Democrats could force vulnerable GOP incumbents to take tough votes on just months before the midterms.
Besides ongoing intra-GOP disputes about the amount of Pentagon funding to include and whether to offset the spending with cuts elsewhere, Thune is dealing with senators who aren’t convinced that they should force the issue just months before voters cast ballots.
Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who described himself as a “lean no” on the budget, said his views were being influenced by wanting to protect vulnerable colleagues.
“There’s only like five members of my conference that I care about. and they’re the ones who are running in at-risk states,” he said.
Asked if he would vote “no” to protect them, Tillis added, “I’m going to support my members who are up for election. They’re the most important priority right now.”
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