The Senate wants to put its “imprint” on the House-passed budget reconciliation package, in the words of Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Senate Republicans largely agree with him. The big question is how far they’ll ultimately go.
The chamber has to contend with the Byrd Rule, the process of ensuring every provision complies with budget reconciliation guidelines. And Senate Republicans each have their own ideas about how drastically they want to change the House bill.
But Thune can only afford to lose three GOP senators, so making dramatic changes is a major risk for the whip count.
“I don’t think we’ll tear down the whole house,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a former House member. “We may go in and repaint some of the interior walls and maybe some of the interior decorations. We’ll make sure we put our fingerprints on it.”
One of the biggest questions through this process has been whether Senate committees will do their own markups. Thune told us in an interview that’s definitely in the cards, arguing “you can improve the product” by going through regular order. This is especially true on the tax side, although every change senators make risks losing House GOP votes.
Plus, the Senate is trying to meet an aggressive July 4 goal for getting the bill to the president’s desk. Congress needs to raise the debt limit by August recess, and Republicans plan to do that in the reconciliation bill.
The big question marks: The Senate has a significant contingent of Republicans who don’t want deep cuts to Medicaid spending. A handful of senators oppose aggressive repeals of IRA clean energy tax credits.
On the other end, several hardline conservatives want deeper spending cuts. And no one in the Senate GOP likes SALT.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), whose panel handles taxes and Medicaid, said senators will have to comb through everything. The House-passed reconciliation bill is over 1,000 pages. There’s a lot for senators to love, hate or demand be overhauled.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the Senate probably needs to find more spending cuts to assuage conservatives. Tillis also said there must be changes to how the House handled clean energy tax credit repeals from the Inflation Reduction Act — which could cause a loss in revenue and anger House conservatives.
“It’s a good start, but we have work to do,” Tillis said.
Trump and the Senate: The president doesn’t have quite as much sway with senators as he does with House members. That’s not to say Senate Republicans won’t ultimately fold under pressure from President Donald Trump. But the political dynamics are different.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) hasn’t been afraid to speak out against Trump lately. Johnson insisted that while like-minded House members may have buckled under pressure from Trump out of fear of a primary challenge, he won’t.
“Those guys want to keep their seats, I understand the pressure,” Johnson said. “He can’t pressure me that way. I ran in 2010 because we were mortgaging our children’s future.”
Regardless, Trump’s involvement in the Senate process will be key — even if it may be calibrated differently.
