The Reconciliation Bill Isn’t Finished. Senate Republicans Want to Vote on It Anyway.

The Senate GOP’s reconciliation bill isn’t fully written. Republicans are still working out some of the biggest sticking points. They’re reworking parts of the measure that the Senate parliamentarian nixed. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune doesn’t know if he has sufficient support to pass the legislation.

“Let’s hope so,” Thune said Monday, when asked if he has the votes.

But Senate Republicans fully plan on voting on the bill this week, possibly as soon as Thursday.

Thune, House Republican leaders and the White House all want the bill to go to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4. That timeline has always been ambitious, but it’s even more so as the House and Senate struggle to find compromises on critical components of the legislation.

Lawmakers are currently slated to leave town this week for a one-week recess, though Thune has said he will force the chamber to stay in session until the reconciliation package gets through it.

“Senators return to Washington today and we will remain here until this bill is passed,” Thune wrote in a Fox News opinion piece Monday. “We know that Democrats will fearmonger and misrepresent our efforts, and we expect them to drag this debate long into the night with unrelated issues.”

Other Republicans seem to think — or at least hope — that a Thursday vote is possible. Sen. John Cornyn told reporters it “sounded like” the schedule is heading in that direction. That would leave lawmakers working through an all-night vote-a-rama on amendments into Friday, and potentially leaving town by the weekend.

But for that to happen, there is a lot lawmakers need to work out within the next 72 hours. And some senators don’t think the timeline is realistic.

“Probably not,” Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters Monday, when asked if the legislation would be ready by Thursday.

Right now, there’s no deal on Medicaid provisions in the bill. A number of Senate Republicans oppose the proposed cuts in the bill and want changes. There are also a number of GOP lawmakers who are against overall spending levels, arguing the bill would add too much to the deficit. And at least one senator — Rand Paul of Kentucky — remains opposed to a debt limit increase being included in the package.

Critically, there also is still no deal on the state and local tax deduction. The House’s reconciliation bill included a $40,000 cap on the deduction, winning the support of blue state Republicans who demanded an increase. The Senate’s bill maintains the current $10,000 deduction.

Those blue state Republicans insist they won’t support “a dollar less” than the $40,000 cap, though Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who’s been acting as a sort of liaison between the House and Senate on SALT, said a deal could be imminent — possibly as soon as Monday night.

“Maybe not one that all of us are going to like, but one that all of us can land on and have something satisfactory to it,” Mullin said of a potential deal.

He added that there’s increased pressure to find savings after the Senate parliamentarian’s “Byrd bath” review of the bill nixed several provisions that were meant to be cost saving.

“So now you’re looking at every straw to pull and more money to get, and SALT becomes an appetizer,” Mullin told reporters. “I’m trying to fend that off as much as I can. But it’s just the facts. You know, there’s nobody in our conference that lives in a SALT state.”

That “Byrd bath” review did deem several provisions of the bill ineligible for consideration under reconciliation, which requires all parts of the bill to be significantly related to the federal budget. Still, some lawmakers are trying to rework rejected chunks of the bill for another parliamentary review.

For instance, the Byrd bath nixed a proposal to offload costs from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program onto states in a new cost-sharing program. But on Monday, Sen. John Boozman, chair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said Republicans are trying to rework the proposal so it can be reconsidered.

Boozman said Republicans have “good reason to believe that if we make some changes,” the provision has a chance, though he acknowledged “there is concern” that continuing to rework the provisions and send them for more review could delay the bill.

“And that’s why it needs to be done as soon as possible,” he said. “So again, these things are going to leadership, and they’re taking them as a group and negotiating.”

The SNAP cost-sharing program isn’t the only provision the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, rejected over the weekend. She also ruled against sections of the bill that would have strengthened congressional control over agency rulemaking, weakened the ability of judges to impose injunctions against the federal government and placed a funding cap on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It’s unclear whether Republicans will try to revamp all of those provisions, but Sen. Mike Rounds told reporters he thought there was “a path forward to significantly limit the CFPB and save some money as well.”

The parliamentarian did permit one controversial provision that would impose a 10-year ban on states regulating artificial intelligence to remain on the bill, though a handful of Senate Republicans still want it stripped out.

Thune acknowledged on Monday that parliamentarian hang-ups might cause further delays, telling reporters it’s “a feature that we don’t have complete control over, but they’re working through it.”

“We’re on schedule,” he said.

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Ursula Perano is a reporter at NOTUS.