Lawmakers are just now catching up on the missed sleep from the marathon floor sessions during the last reconciliation fight. But that isn’t stopping Republicans from starting to talk about the next reconciliation battle.
“I think I pretty well have a commitment,” Sen. Ron Johnson said of leadership’s promise for a second reconciliation bill.
Johnson, a fiscal hawk who withheld his vote on the reconciliation bill until the final days over the legislation’s $3.9 trillion price tag, said he ultimately decided to back President Donald Trump’s landmark legislation because of assurances from top Senate Republicans — as well as the president himself — that the GOP would pursue another reconciliation bill in the next fiscal year that addresses spending cuts.
That’d be ambitious, to say the least. But Johnson isn’t the only Republican pushing for, as he put it, “a second bite at the apple.” He’s not even the only influential Republican with that last name calling for another reconciliation measure.
“We’ve been planning a second reconciliation bill for the fall,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News Sunday. “It would be attached to the next fiscal year. And then potentially one in the spring. That’s my plan: three reconciliation bills before this Congress is over. I think we can do that.”
While it’s not impossible for Republicans to tackle more bills, GOP leaders expended a lot of energy and political capital to get this first package up the hill. Finding themselves at the base of the mountain again, with the reconciliation rock at their feet, is basically a Sisyphean curse.
Some Republicans acknowledged Tuesday that trying to get another reconciliation bill done this fall might be a bit of a stretch.
“I wouldn’t say anything’s too ambitious,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said of trying to get two more reconciliation bills done by the end of this Congress. “I’m more interested in having a functioning appropriations process right now.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, another reluctant reconciliation vote, told NOTUS that while leadership assured conservatives there would be “future opportunities” to address the deficit, she said “there were no promises, none, nothing” related to a second reconciliation bill.
There’s good reason to think a new measure would be a challenge.
For starters, the GOP’s latest reconciliation bill was built on widely accepted Republican positions like extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, increasing funding for the border and scaling back Biden-era clean energy efforts. But it still took months of haggling, and the bill only passed the House and Senate by a hair. There’s little sense on Capitol Hill that a second measure would be easier, especially with the low-hanging fruit already taken care of.
Another issue that could present a challenge is the calendar. Government funding runs out Sept. 30, and lawmakers need either regular appropriations bills to be signed into law — an unlikely scenario — or some combination of a continuing resolution or an omnibus spending deal to avoid a government shutdown.
On Tuesday, Senate Republicans acknowledged that appropriations bills — as well as other must-pass bills — could take priority over another round of reconciliation.
“We have the capability. The question is, are there other bills that are even more important than that?” Sen. Mike Rounds told NOTUS. “One of which might be the appropriations bills and the National Defense Authorization Act.”
“After we’re sure that we can get those done, I have no objections to taking another look at a reconciliation process,” Rounds said. “But first things first.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin said “it’s possible” to do another bill but “it depends on what we put in it.”
“It’s 100% possible,” Mullin said. “We’re going to do it, if we can.”
Some were more eager about the possibility. Sen. Steve Daines told NOTUS that Republicans have “an opportunity” to do another reconciliation bill.
“We should look at those options and see what would need to be done,” Daines said.
When asked how the appropriations timeline would factor into the schedule, Daines said that’s “always a challenge,” but he also suggested Republicans “need to keep pushing forward.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville was also optimistic. He told NOTUS he thinks another reconciliation bill “this year, and one next year” was possible, saying Christmas seemed like a realistic deadline for the next measure.
Lawmakers passing multiple reconciliation bills in the same session wouldn’t exactly be a new phenomenon. In 2021, under President Joe Biden, Democrats muscled through a COVID-19 stimulus bill under reconciliation with some Republican support. And then, in 2022, Democrats passed another reconciliation bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.
While Republicans are set to have the presidency for the next four years, they could very easily lose the House — perhaps even the Senate — in 2026. If Democrats take the majority in either chamber, the chances of Republicans getting another reconciliation bill through effectively go to zero.
For now, in the immediate aftermath of this first reconciliation package, a Republican aide told NOTUS that GOP lawmakers need to focus on selling this legislation before they start drafting a second.
“We owe it to the American people to be out there continuing to sell the bill we just passed and talking about how important it is to families and businesses,” this aide said. “We certainly have more work ahead of us this year, but we can’t lose sight of this critical mission.”