President Donald Trump sent a clear message to congressional Republicans this month that there’s no need to pass another party-line megabill this year. Many, however, aren’t ready to give up yet.
Trump’s comments in a Fox Business Network interview earlier this month appeared to finally settle a long-running GOP debate over whether to pursue a follow-up to the “big, beautiful bill” enacted in July, saying “we’ve gotten everything passed that we need.”
But some lawmakers are insisting that the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process offers an unmissable opportunity for Republicans to enact major conservative policy changes ahead of the midterm elections — and that there is still a window to get it done.
Those Republicans are largely brushing off Trump’s comments, refusing to take them as a death knell for their efforts.
“One day he’s okay with it, and the next day he’s not,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who is one of the loudest evangelists for passing another party-line bill before the midterms, arguing Republicans “haven’t done a damn thing” since last year’s effort.
Those attitudes threaten to extend the will-they-or-won’t-they discussion for potentially several more months as some factions keep pressure on GOP leaders to keep hope alive.
The influential Republican Study Committee, which includes scores of House conservatives, has been holding listening sessions since last August for what could go into "Reconciliation 2.0.” It put out a framework in January outlining how such a bill could fulfill an ambitious housing, health care and energy agenda. The group is not yet abandoning the effort.
“There's always a chance until there's not,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), a former RSC chair and member of House GOP leadership.
Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), the RSC's current chair, said in a statement that a second reconciliation bill would be “the perfect vehicle” to unite Republicans behind “Trump’s America First agenda in 2026.”
“This is our moment, and we intend to make the most of it,” he said.
But to many senior Republicans that amounts to false hope — and a distraction from other matters on the congressional agenda in the coming months. Hopes abound for progress on bipartisan housing, permitting and transportation bills.
It was a particularly grueling process to get the first megabill through both chambers last year — and leaders had $5 trillion worth of tax cuts to dangle in front of recalcitrant members to help push it along.
House Republicans barely passed the bill on party lines in July, and their margin has only decreased since: They can currently afford no more than one defection.
“I would love a second reconciliation bill, but I can count votes,” Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in an interview. “And we do not have the votes for a second reconciliation.”
Speaker Mike Johnson and other House GOP leaders insist they haven’t ruled out doing a second reconciliation bill and say it's still an active discussion, even as some senior House Republicans and GOP leadership aides privately doubt they will ever have the votes to move forward.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune also hasn’t dismissed another bill — but privately there’s a hefty dose of skepticism among senators and aides that there’s much of an appetite for another big party-line heave.
Asked about Trump’s latest comments, Thune acknowledged in an interview that there’s interest among some members. But he added that Republicans have to be “realistic” about the prospects of assembling a proposal that can garner 51 GOP votes and withstand a free-for-all of politically tricky changes from Democrats.
“We have to have a reason to do it,” Thune added.
To get another bill across the finish line during a midterm year, Republicans would likely need Trump to articulate what precisely he wants in a bill and then for the president to spend weeks, and potentially months, trying to help round up the votes.
But Trump has expressed skepticism about reconciliation, further raising the likelihood that the prospects of another bill are DOA. In addition to his recent comments, he kvetched about how little can actually get done in a reconciliation bill during a meeting with Senate Republicans last fall, instead urging Republicans to break the filibuster — a nonstarter for a significant swath of the conference.
Trump rekindled that push Thursday, telling senators in a Truth Social post to pass a GOP elections bill by insisting on a “talking filibuster” that would theoretically force Democrats to hold the floor indefinitely. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill, but many Republicans aren’t interested in skirting the chamber’s 60-vote supermajority requirement for most legislation.
The intraparty division is expected to come to a head next month at the House Republican retreat in south Florida, where a second reconciliation bill will be a topic of conversation. A previous closed-door meeting of GOP lawmakers in December grew heated, with vulnerable Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) saying it would “never” happen.
Reconciliation got a brief mention during a Senate GOP retreat earlier this month, but most of the focus was on a slate of bipartisan bills that could come up this year, as well as the need to promote last year’s megabill, according to attendees who were granted anonymity to describe the closed-door event.
But some Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee — including Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — are pushing for more. Graham has told his members that he plans to move forward with a budget resolution that would tee up a second reconciliation bill aimed at beefing up military and border spending, addressing health care costs and targeting fraud in social services.
But according to his committee members, Graham hasn’t given a strict timeline for when he’ll start moving, and there’s skepticism that it will amount to much without GOP leaders’ involvement.
“I don’t know how you move forward without the majority leader’s okay,” Kennedy said in an interview. “Senator Thune wants us to only work on bipartisan bills. I love Senator Thune like a taco, but he needs to back off the crank if he believes that. There aren’t going to be any bipartisan bills — we’re right in the middle of the midterm election. Our one shot to get something is reconciliation.”
One of the other challenges is litigating what exactly would go into a second reconciliation bill.
Senate conservatives have floated taking another crack at healthcare, but that would risk exposing deep GOP divisions just months before the midterms. Many of the party’s most unifying health care proposals were omitted from last year’s megabill because of the Senate’s strict rules governing reconciliation.
Some senior House Republicans have discussed attempting to codify Trump’s tariffs in another party-line bill. But that long-shot effort is now effectively dead after six Republicans voted this month to reject Trump’s levies on Canadian imports — with more such tariff votes to come.
Asked about the possibility of codifying tariffs in a party-line package, Smith reiterated in an interview, “There's not going to be a second reconciliation bill.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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