Rep. August Pfluger, the chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said he thinks passing a second budget reconciliation bill is achievable, despite a tiny GOP majority and a largely skeptical conference.
“I think we’re going to be successful, and we’re going to continue to deliver,” Pfluger told NOTUS’ Reese Gorman on the latest episode of the On NOTUS podcast. “And that’s really our role as the RSC. What do we do? We try to unify our members and say, ‘Let’s go get something done and let’s push because we’re here in an important time.’”
Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump have spoken out in favor of a second reconciliation package, though many House Republicans told NOTUS they worry that pushing the package through Congress would hurt some members’ reelection chances ahead of midterms.
Pfluger said his party should use the reconciliation package to force Democrats to take a stance on controversial issues as they campaign for the November elections.
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“That’s what we’re trying to achieve right now, is not put people in a hard position, but put Democrats in a hard position so that when Democrats go back home in October and November, and they try to explain why they voted against lowering the price of health care, they really don’t have a good explanation for it,” Pfluger said.
“Those are the types of things that we want to accomplish, and we believe that we have — polling suggests that we have — a number of bills that fit into that category that really put them into a box,” Pfluger added.
When Congress passed its sweeping reconciliation package last July, the package passed in the House with two Republicans voting against it. Now, the GOP has a slimmer one-seat majority in the House, meaning that if no Democrats cross party lines, Republicans could not afford to lose a single vote to pass a second package.
Pfluger said despite the GOP’s razor-thin majority, representatives understand the necessity of coalescing behind a package.
“There are some members who have problems with individual bills and ideas and legislation,” Pfluger said. “That’s fine. This is a two-minute drill. This is a narrow scope of ideas. When you run a two-minute drill, you don’t open the playbook to every single play. You open it to the ones that are gonna work in that timeframe and for that moment, and that’s exactly the mentality that we have.”
On NOTUS is a weekly podcast in which NOTUS reporters talk to lawmakers about how they got to Washington and what motivates them. You can download or listen here.
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