As House Republicans repeatedly pressure senators to change a reconciliation bill House lawmakers already had a chance to shape, some Republicans in the upper chamber are getting frustrated.
“I think it’s kind of a hollow argument,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a member of Republican leadership, told NOTUS. “They’re entitled to their opinion. I don’t think it’s influencing our decision in terms of what we’re going to do.”
Capito mentioned how some members have said they might not support the measure over certain provisions, and imitated them by saying, “‘Oh, this guy’s not going to vote for it, we got to change that,’” summoning some of the feelings senators have had about the process.
“They had their chance,” Capito said.
The input from House Republicans has resulted in frustration within Republican ranks that the reconciliation process has played out both too fast and too slow, with House lawmakers showing some buyer’s remorse after supporting a hastily considered bill, and others expressing annoyance that enacting President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda has taken this long.
Trump has put immense pressure on Republicans to pass this legislation as soon as possible. But with several holdouts in differing factions of the GOP, and the slim margins in both chambers, Republican leaders are nervous about getting near-unanimous support from their ranks.
In the Senate, leaders can only afford to lose three Republicans before the package fails. And the numbers are similarly narrow in the House, where Freedom Caucus members are staking out the position that they won’t support a watered-down version of the bill — they’ve said they want it to get more conservative in the more moderate Senate — while others concerned about the state and local tax deduction insist they won’t vote for “a dollar less” than the $40,000 deduction they negotiated in the House.
A senior Republican aide told NOTUS that GOP leaders are listening to concerns from House members, but in the end, the legislation must benefit all the lawmakers’ states and districts — making it unlikely they’ll be able to compromise on all of their requests.
House conservatives have been adamant that the current reconciliation bill — the one, senators point out, they voted for — needs to cut more spending. And those Republicans concerned with the SALT deduction are staking out a hard line, insisting that the Senate’s current language — which leaves the SALT deduction at its current $10,000 limit — just won’t happen. Meanwhile, another group of more moderate Republicans are also hoping the Senate restores certain clean energy tax credits and waters down the Medicaid cuts.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune already faces a challenge trying to get Republicans in his chamber to compromise on the bill in time to meet the party’s self-imposed July 4 deadline. But since the House package crossed the finish line, members of the lower chamber have been sending open letters, going to the media and otherwise voicing concern about aspects of the bill they swallowed while voting “yes” just a few weeks ago.
Most notably, however, each House faction is working senators sympathetic to their causes.
Just in the last two weeks, a group of House GOP moderates concerned about changes to Medicaid, SNAP and clean energy tax credits met with fellow moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski on June 11. The group included Reps. Jen Kiggans, Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Brian Fitzpatrick and others.
The so-called SALT Caucus has been huddling with Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a former House member who joined the Senate in 2023 and understands the politics of both chambers.
Mullin said Wednesday that he’s hoping to have a negotiated deal with the concerned House members by “early next week,” according to Semafor.
And Freedom Caucus members have been vocal about their request for additional spending cuts, in an effort to appeal to like-minded conservatives in the Senate — though some Senate Republicans have pointed out that the Senate legislation is already more conservative than the House legislation in a number of respects.
As Capito said when asked about the Freedom Caucus’ concerns, “We have more savings in ours than they have in theirs.”
Still, some senators have been open to the House’s suggestions — or, at least, they haven’t been resentful.
“It’s just part of the process,” Sen. John Boozman told NOTUS. “Some of them feel strongly about the work that they did, so it’s just, it’s just part of the process.”
“Major concerns will have to be worked out, and I hope we actually work them out before we pass the bill,” Boozman added.
Sen. Thom Tillis was similarly open to hearing from his House colleagues.
“We should be instructed by their concerns and their interests, because at the end of the day, both chambers got to pass this bill,” Tillis told NOTUS.
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Daniella Diaz is a reporter at NOTUS. Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.