Congressional Republicans are moving full steam ahead with plans to muster through a second megabill, this time focusing primarily on immigration enforcement and military funding — and potentially some election integrity proposals.
Top Budget Committee Republicans from the House and Senate met on Wednesday afternoon to discuss a path forward and to align their goals for the reconciliation package, a process that would allow Republicans to fast-track partisan legislation without being beholden to the filibuster. It’s not yet clear what will be included in the forthcoming bill, but some areas have already emerged as key priorities.
“The purpose of the second reconciliation bill is to make sure there is adequate funding to secure our homeland and to support our men and women in the military who are fighting so bravely,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee said in a statement on Wednesday. “I also think we have many opportunities to improve voter integrity through reconciliation.”
The sudden motivation to cobble together a partisan policy bill comes after months of doubt among GOP circles that another could be passed.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said repeatedly there would need to be good reason to do one. President Donald Trump previously ruled out the proposition altogether.
But with the Department of Homeland Security nearing a record-long shutdown and Democrats standing ready to block any supplemental funding for U.S. military action in the Middle East, Republicans say the stars have aligned to provide an opportunity for one more reconciliation package before the November midterms.
“You’re going to need things that are popular in order to bring people to the place where they can join the team,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington said on Wednesday. “Funding our military in time of war, if that isn’t — if there’s no sense of urgency and accountability for members of Congress to support our commander in chief, I can’t think of a better” motivator.
Republicans say package will be much smaller than before
Although a framework has not been finalized for a Reconciliation 2.0, Republican leaders have largely acknowledged it will be much smaller than the Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Congress last summer.
“I think to succeed, it’ll have to be pretty narrowly focused,” Thune told reporters on Wednesday.
That falls in line with what House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has long advocated for a second reconciliation bill, has been saying for weeks.
“Let’s be realistic, it won’t be as big but it can be just as beautiful,” Johnson told reporters at House Republicans’ annual issues conference this month.
The complicated part, though, will be finding a way to pay for the massive cost of military support — recent reporting suggests the Pentagon is prepared to request up to $200 billion — and immigration enforcement. Agreeing on those offsets will be tricky, and it’s what caused drawn out debate in last year’s gambit.
But a handful of optimistic Republicans have been laying the groundwork for a second reconciliation bill for months, with some groups already prepared with their own proposals.
The Republican Study Committee released a framework in January focusing on six major tenets such as reducing energy costs, lowering health care premiums, making housing more affordable, and codifying several of Trump’s executive orders, among other things. That proposal was meant to serve as a starting point on negotiations, with RSC Chairman August Pfluger telling the Deseret News it can be used to find the necessary offsets.
“We identified over a trillion dollars in potential pay fors,” Pfluger said. “Now, some of these are going to be tougher than others. We acknowledge that, but we at least wanted to start the conversation, which is what our roadmap and framework did.”
Another way to pay for war costs: identifying waste, fraud and abuse.
“There’s no reason that we can’t also advance the president’s war on fraud as a way to pay for the war on a nuclear Iran,” Arrington said.
Republicans eye possible election reforms but fate is unclear
Through the budget reconciliation process, the majority party can prevent a filibuster to expedite the passage of certain legislation and go around the minority party by enacting key pieces of their agenda with a simple majority vote.
But there are certain rules that dictate how often reconciliation can be used, and the procedure can only be utilized to advance budget-related legislation such as taxes, spending and the debt limit.
However, some Republicans are searching for ways to add components to fund election integrity, especially as the party’s SAVE America Act seeking proof-of-citizenship requirements stalls in the Senate.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the lead sponsor of the SAVE America Act, has been adamant that the bill would not qualify for the reconciliation process. But other Republicans have kept their options on the table for some version of Lee’s proposed policies.
“I think there are ways to include election integrity in reconciliation,” Arrington said. “Now you have to craft it in a way that has a material budget. … There’s got to be some component of revenue, some material component of expense, or some combination. So how you write that is important.”
The SAVE America Act as it is written deals solely with legislative policy, which would disqualify it from being exempt from the filibuster under budget reconciliation. Lawmakers could attempt to enact some of its provisions by offering budgetary incentives to individual states, but the election reforms could not be implemented on a national scale like Lee is pushing for.