House Republican Leadership Floats Fourth Reconciliation Bill

House Republican leadership has floated to members a fourth — yes, fourth — reconciliation package they would aim to bring to the floor after the November midterms.

While the plans have no guaranteed path to success and may not become a formal proposal, House Republicans are discussing them internally, House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) and House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said Wednesday.

This Congress has leaned heavily on the party-line reconciliation process that allows legislation to clear the Senate with a simple majority, as Republicans have struggled to pass their legislative agenda. Typically, Congress would pass one or two of these types of budget packages through the reconciliation process — making this Congress an outlier.

The possibility of a fourth reconciliation bill could offer some hope to defense hawks who see the $95 billion package Republicans unveiled Wednesday as falling far short of the military buildup President Donald Trump requested in his $1.5 trillion 2026 budget request.

Rogers said the unplanned cost of Iran and Venezuela operations had created a “big hole” in the Pentagon budget for 2026 that has to be filled.

“This is money we got to backfill — the hole that’s been created with our munitions stockpile problem, and then the operations in Venezuela and Iran,” Rogers said. “If we don’t get this money, there is going to be a very large hole … that has got to be filled. If we don’t get this done, there’s going to be training they just can’t do.”

Republican leaders intend to exclude from the bill announced Wednesday any cuts that would offset the new spending, arguing that the defense and agriculture spending is urgent and that such cuts could complicate or slow down the bill’s passage.

Instead, leaders are signaling to the conference that they could pair additional defense money with offsets in another reconciliation effort after the elections — effectively delaying the politically messy fight over how to pay for the third package’s spending.