Here’s a question many Republican senators are seriously pondering this morning: Is it still possible for the GOP-controlled Congress to send a reconciliation bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4?
The short answer is yes, it is. But with each passing day, Senate Republican leaders are being dealt new setbacks while making limited headway on the biggest remaining hang-ups.
President Donald Trump has been phoning individual GOP senators, and he met separately Thursday with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson. Senators who’ve spoken with Trump say he’s frustrated with the glacially slow Senate movement on the massive tax and spending package, the centerpiece of his legislative agenda.
Thune frequently brands Trump as “the closer” for Senate Republicans, but one key holdout said they’re far from the point when Trump will be needed to help close a deal.
“It’s not worth the president’s time, I think, to engage at that level,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said of a potential Trump meeting with Senate Republicans. “But he’s a good closer, so I think at some point we’ll probably need his help.”
The Senate won’t begin voting on the massive reconciliation package until Saturday at the absolute earliest. And even that’s optimistic, GOP senators said. Thune continues to insist they’re on track.
“We’ll have you out of here by the Fourth of July,” Thune told reporters.
Meanwhile, the Senate parliamentarian has either knocked out or forced Republicans to change significant provisions in the bill, including ones meant to generate billions of dollars in crucial savings to help offset tax cuts and keep fiscal hawks happy.
The parliamentarian knocked out more provisions late Thursday night, including on gun silencers and religious carveouts from the increase in the college endowment tax.
Key issues. The biggest question mark remains the Senate’s drastic crackdown on Medicaid provider taxes and an accompanying stabilization fund for rural hospitals that many GOP senators are demanding.
Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, determined that the provider tax limits don’t comply with the chamber’s reconciliation rules, sending Republicans scrambling. The ruling centered around the provider tax freeze in the bill rather than the Senate’s more drastic constraints for Medicaid expansion states, according to two sources with knowledge of the decision.
Senate GOP leaders believe they can come up with a fix that passes muster with MacDonough. GOP aides for the Senate Finance Committee are working to get back in front of the parliamentarian as soon as possible to argue over new provider tax language.
Yet Senate Republican leaders acknowledged during a closed-door lunch meeting on Thursday that even this won’t solve their biggest problem with the Medicaid cuts, as we scooped. The real issue, GOP leaders said, is that they don’t yet have 50 votes to begin the floor process.
What’s more, key senators signaled Thursday they still have very few details on the hospital fund. Republican leadership proposed $15 billion, but that’s not enough for most of the holdouts. Plus, GOP senators have been discussing potentially delaying the timeline for the harsher provider tax limits.
Republicans notched a key win Thursday, though, on a plan to force states to take on more SNAP costs. This is a critical spending cut that Republicans had to tweak after the parliamentarian ruled out initial language.
Trump’s role. Trump has told multiple GOP senators privately that he prefers the House’s provider tax framework, which is much less drastic than the Senate’s version. During Thursday’s lunch, according to multiple attendees, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) recounted Trump telling him: “What the fuck are you guys doing?”
But Trump hasn’t said any of this publicly. Tillis says he’s operating under the assumption that Trump “supports the Senate’s mark” on provider taxes, despite having not heard from the president directly.
In private, Thune has stood by the Senate’s approach on provider taxes and has insisted that the House will accept whatever the Senate passes, as we’ve reported. When senators have urged a return to the House’s framework, Thune has consistently responded by noting this would net a lot less in necessary savings.
“I think he wants us to do what we can do to get him a bill,” Thune said of Trump’s position shortly after meeting with the president Thursday afternoon.
The House. House Republicans are watching all of their Senate GOP counterparts’ moves and already squabbling over how spending cuts, IRA clean energy credit repeals and SALT are landing.
There’s been a flurry of negotiations over the last 48 hours trying to figure out a path forward on the state-and-local-tax deduction, in particular. House SALT holdouts went to the Treasury Department three separate times yesterday to meet with Secretary Scott Bessent and White House aides. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) has been involved as the main Senate negotiator.
The SALT talks seem to be getting somewhere. The blue-state Republicans once said they wouldn’t renegotiate the House deal, but now say they’re negotiating in good faith. At least one holdout is still digging in. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) publicly rejected an offer Thursday afternoon and refused to attend further meetings.
Senate Republicans need clarity on SALT fast to finalize text. Plus, whatever the Senate agrees to on SALT will add billions to the package’s price tag, which conservatives are eyeing closely.
