Republican hopes of pursuing a second major domestic policy package this year are running into major roadblocks as they confront a lack of consensus and a grand, unifying goal — like the extension of sweeping tax cuts that held the last megabill together.
The bearish view — already prevalent inside the Senate GOP — is now taking hold among some members of Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership circle, after he was touting the possibility of a fresh party-line bill as he worked to push the first package across the line in July.
Still, House GOP leaders are forging ahead for now. They tasked their committee chairs earlier in the summer with assembling lists of proposals for a second budget reconciliation package, as well as program cuts to pay for them.
Those proposals are due by the end of this week, and Johnson and other top Republicans are expected to kick off a process to circulate and evaluate them across the conference. But after the fight for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” sparked intense policy fights among GOP factions, there’s a growing realization the party likely can’t pass a new package before the end of the year — if at all — according to interviews with more than a dozen House and Senate Republicans.
One major obstacle is fiscal: Key Republicans are warning their colleagues against tapping into some of the biggest pots of money that could offset the costs of a second package — such as additional Medicaid spending cuts. Many vulnerable GOP lawmakers believe that would be a death knell before next year’s midterms.
“All of the low-hanging fruit and the middle-hanging fruit has been picked,” Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), chair of the Main Street Caucus, said in an interview earlier this year. “And we’re talking about a situation where we’re looking at a funnel. And the more you go in there on the mandatory spending, the harder it is to find consensus.”
House GOP leadership aides and top committee staffers met earlier this summer to discuss a second tilt at reconciliation. But Republicans didn’t yet have a larger theme for a package.
“Beyond checking the box of making good on this exercise, it’s hard to see the momentum behind it,” one senior GOP aide said. “What’s the impetus this time?”
Prospects for another megabill are facing even longer odds in the Senate, where Republicans have been skeptical of the idea for months. Driving the growing pessimism on the Hill is that there’s no forcing mechanism driving Republicans to unite behind a new bill — like the massive looming year-end tax hike that kept the first bill moving.
“It feels like we have a hammer in our hand and we’re walking around looking for a nail,” said one GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak freely.
“There’s not an idea of, ‘here are the things we really, really need to get done,’” the Republican continued. “So right now, there’s the hammer in our hand, [and we’re] saying, ‘What could we get with this?’ And I think it’s not a good strategy.”
Republicans are also already contending with other major legislative lifts this fall, including funding the government, passing the annual defense reauthorization bill and addressing expiring health insurance subsidies. Next year won’t be all that much easier, with election-year pressures quickly weighing on Republicans in both chambers.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune didn’t definitively rule out a second megabill in a brief interview but acknowledged “there would have to be a reason to do it.”
On the House side, the promise of another party-line package was a key element in the lobbying campaign Johnson, fellow GOP leaders and White House officials undertook to get the first bill done. There are signs the speaker and his top lieutenants want to follow through.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has coordinated the early talks with committee chairs about putting together menus of potential provisions that could be included in a follow-up bill. Meanwhile, the Republican Study Committee — an influential group of conservative House members — held staff briefings throughout the August recess on the incipient effort, including one meeting with a chief architect of the hard-right push for deep Medicaid spending cuts in the first GOP package.
But the push for a second bill comes as Democrats hammer House and Senate Republicans in ads and on the campaign trail over what they are calling the “big, ugly bill.” The attacks have been effective enough that White House officials counseled House Republicans this week to effort a rebrand around the bill’s tax benefits for “working families.”
Now, even some of Johnson’s closest leadership allies are privately acknowledging the massive challenge of assembling a bill that could garner the support of nearly every House Republican. Within the next few weeks, two new Democrats are expected to win special elections, giving Johnson only a two-vote margin on partisan legislation.
The “big, beautiful bill” exposed major fault lines inside the GOP on tax provisions, safety-net cuts and numerous other policy areas, and many Republicans are noting that most politically palatable cuts have already been made.
House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said in July that his panel had “more than done our part on reconciliation one, so I wouldn’t be real eager to be involved in reconciliation two.” The panel approved nearly $300 billion in spending cuts across the country’s largest anti-hunger program for the first package.Flood said he thought there were “some opportunities” to legislate around housing issues in a potential second package but wanted to see what else GOP committee chairs have in mind.
Johnson hasn’t specifically committed to a timeline, but he has told Republicans a second reconciliation package is still under discussion. House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters as recently as Thursday about spending cuts that could be embedded in a second reconciliation package.
Meanwhile, as most House Republicans have kept their skepticism quiet, their Senate counterparts have been more open with their doubts.
Three Senate GOP aides, granted anonymity to disclose private discussions, said the prevailing view on their side of the Capitol is that there are few deadlines and must-pass legislative items to motivate lawmakers. One aide questioned how many of the ideas circulating in the House would even pass muster with the Senate rules governing the reconciliation process.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Finance Committee and a leadership adviser, said it would be “hard” to move forward with a second bill this year.
“The engine that pulled the train last time was the debt ceiling and expiring tax provisions,” he said. “I don’t see a similar dynamic.”
Benjamin Guggenheim and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.
