Fresh off of the midterm elections that have Republicans licking their wounds from a massive blowout flipping control of both chambers, lawmakers are attempting to use the lame-duck session to revive hopes of getting a third budget reconciliation bill approved.
However, they are finding the road and the timetable treacherous. Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated that he still is not sure whether the party has the votes to advance a single-party measure of any kind, despite hopes that they could be unlocked postelection.
“That’s always the drill with reconciliation: What’s possible? What can you get 50 votes for, and that’s tough because everybody’s got different ideas,” said Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota. “Of course, now you had the election, so everybody’s talking about what else? And that’s where we’re at.”
Republican members discussed the options during a party luncheon last Wednesday, a day after Thune and the rest of the leadership team were reelected to their posts to serve in the minority next year.
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The unrest inside the Republican conference over the midterm results prompted Thune to announce that members can expect to “stretch the calendar” in order to approve scores of judges and executive branch nominees before ceding control of the chamber in the new year.
The conference also adopted a resolution on Tuesday to serve as their guiding light for the next month and a half. On top of the nomination spree, it called for the conference “to do everything humanly possible to pass a reconciliation bill” before Democrats take over.
Time is tight, though. Thune told reporters that members must make a decision by Thanksgiving, at the very latest. Hoeven, an appropriator, indicated that a call must come even earlier.
“We have to be moving,” Hoeven said. “We’re scheduling it out and having the conversation. … We got to get moving if we’re going to get it done.”
However, the lawmakers who were against a third bill preelection are showing few signs of changing their tune.
Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, among others, remain skeptical of a budget resolution over concerns about the Iran war and going around appropriators to green-light defense funding, a likely cornerstone of a potential package.
“We need to be realistic about whether or not we can get the votes,” Tillis told reporters. “There’s a lot of people that are for reconciliation. The problem is, it’s for their version of reconciliation and there are probably four or five different versions out there, and none of the Venn diagrams work to get to 51, in my judgment, right now.”
The calendar is another complicating factor. Republicans have just over six weeks of control left and an ambitious to-do list, with little time for a time-consuming negotiation of whether a third reconciliation bill is something worth pursuing.
If they did move ahead, that interferes with their plan to confirm as many of Trump’s nominees as possible, as no other business could be considered while a reconciliation bill is on the floor. There remain two-dozen of judges who Republicans hope to confirm, on top of a wide swath of posts to fill throughout the administration.
“Nobody’s throwing in the towel yet,” one Senate GOP aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “But people are internalizing the list of things to do and simultaneously realizing that if you do one thing on the floor you’re not doing another thing.”
There’s also vote constraints that will come into play. Sen.-elect Kevin Hern will be sworn in by the end of the month, depriving House Republicans of a vote. Thune met with incoming House Minority Leader Jim Jordan on Wednesday.
Senate Republicans will also see their majority dwindle next month when Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is sworn into office, giving them less wiggle room.
Members have also discussed the possibility of including a debt limit increase in order to take that off the table for Democrats to use as leverage next year, but Hoeven said that there is no “definitive plan” on that front.
Nevertheless, there remains an intense desire to approve something. Prior to the election, any bill would have centered on $350 billion that the Pentagon has requested, funding related to the SAVE America voting bill and aid for farmers and areas affected by natural disasters.
The postelection push has expanded that potential pot, even though members remain cognizant that if a bill were to move, they have limited bandwidth to do so.
“It’s no excuse that, well, it may be hard to get the votes. If your conclusion is that we shouldn’t try reconciliation because it might be hard to get the votes, then congratulations, you’re stupid,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a leading proponent of passing a third measure.
“You can’t put 12 things into a four-thing box. We ought to be able to agree on money for defense, and we ought to be able to agree on at least one other policy,” he added.
Kennedy, name checked Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s anti-fraud bill as a possibility, saying the juice was worth the squeeze for one last big ticket item to conclude the Republican trifecta.
“I think we ought to surprise ourselves and do something intelligent and show the American people that we heard them,” he said. “You can talk yourself out of anything, and I concede this may fail. But why not try?”
Others believe that the party is not taking the message sent by voters to heart, especially on funding the Iran war.
“The number one issue that came out of the election and the exit polls, that the vice president admitted — was the war and the price of gasoline,” Paul told The Washington Sun. “For Republicans to immediately come back and, by sheer might with just Republicans, finance [the] Iran war, I think, seems to me like they didn’t listen.”
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