The House Republican leadership is pushing for a second party-line reconciliation bill and plan to discuss it at their upcoming policy retreat in Doral, Florida, next week.
Sources close to GOP leadership told the Washington Examiner that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is pursuing the effort. A second megabill reflecting the GOP’s tax and spending priorities has been an ambition for lawmakers, but the path forward is complicated by Johnson’s razor-thin majority.
Johnson can only lose one GOP vote on any measure before having to rely on Democrats for support. Given the dynamics, a new reconciliation legislation will have to appeal to both moderate Republicans and hardliners within the House Freedom Caucus.
The Republican Study Committee, the biggest faction of House Republicans, has already been working on such a bill. The group has designed a framework for what the legislation could include, but it’s unclear whether GOP leadership will use the blueprint.
“We’ve got great support from Speaker Johnson and Leader Scalise,” RSC Chairman August Pfluger said on the Scott Jennings Show. “They know what’s at stake. I think the Senate knows what’s at stake. They can’t count on 60 votes for much of anything. So inside our own conference, we are doing the hard work right now to figure out what can go in.”
“It would be political malpractice to not do this,” the chairman said.
But leadership has expressed skepticism in the past on getting another major piece of legislation across the finish line.
REPUBLICAN LEADERS TEMPER EXPECTATIONS OF PULLING OFF RECONCILATION 2.0
“I’d sure love to do one, but obviously, with a now one-seat majority, basically, it means we’ve all got to come together and agree on what that framework would look like,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said earlier this year.
With Election Day around the corner and Democrats out performing in nearly every recent election, leadership is looking for anything they can do to protect their incumbents and hold on to their majority for the last two years of President Donald Trump’s second term.