House Republicans are already teasing the idea of a second budget bill to advance President Donald Trump‘s agenda, even as the Senate has yet to act on his most sweeping priorities.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has offered few details of what might be contained in the package, but when asked by the Washington Examiner he named “fiscal sanity” as the guiding ethos behind the bill.
“I said this is the beginning of a process and what you’re going to see is a continuing theme of us identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in government, which is our pledge of common sense, restoring common sense and fiscal sanity, so we have lots of ideas of things that might be in that package,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner.
Fiscal hawks demanded steep spending cuts as part of the “big, beautiful bill,” which the Senate hopes to pass by July 4, but were forced to make more modest changes in a compromise with House centrists. Already, Republicans are eyeing the same priorities as Johnson turns his attention to another budget resolution that allows them to sidestep the Senate filibuster.
“Cleaning up all the SALT mess would be my first choice,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told the Washington Examiner.
“I would like to see as much of the IRA cut out as possible. I’d like to see the SALT go away. I’d like to see savings to get as close to neutral on the deficit spending as possible,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told the Washington Examiner.
“More cuts, I mean just the same thing Elon is saying,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told the Washington Examiner. “We don’t have the deficit reduction that we need, but it’s a first step.”
“Probably the things that we should have done in this one,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner. “Reduce more spending. Do the things we should have done to reform Medicaid fully, do the things we should have done to fully repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Johnson first floated the idea of another budget bill over the weekend, stating on Meet the Press on Sunday that Republicans were “going to have a second budget reconciliation bill that follows after this, and we’re beginning next week the appropriations process, which is the spending bills for government.”
Johnson told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that Republicans have been working on the first reconciliation bill for a total of 14 months, emphasizing how long the process takes.
“We will go through that same laborious process, and it will be fruitful in the end, and we will do right by the American people,” he said.
Tensions have run high between different factions of the GOP conference throughout the reconciliation process. On one end, some centrist Republicans in states like California and New York had aggressively advocating to increase the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions. Standing in the way of SALT Republicans are the fiscal hawks, who warned Republicans over the last few months that their support for the bill hinged on finding enough cuts to offset the tax cuts.
Before passing the House, the updated bill text contained language to appease holdouts by moving up Medicaid work requirement implementation to December 2026 and raising the SALT deduction cap to $40,400 for people making under $505,000, with a 1% annual increase over eight years. This amendment provided final changes to policy areas included in the megabill that each of the House’s 11 committees took up and passed over the last month.
Whether this megabill will come to fruition will only be told by time. But as the midterm elections quickly approach, and Congress does the heavy lifting before campaign season rolls around, some members question the purpose of talks of a second package.
“I think second reconciliation package talk is code for trying to appease not doing what I think needs to be done in this package,” Roy told the Washington Examiner.
“Once you move this bill through with the key things, and you want to come back later and say, ‘We’ll do some spending cuts later,’ they won’t,” Roy added.
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Even after fiscal hawks put up a fight on Medicaid reform, Elon Musk, who recently departed from the Trump administration, expressed his strong distaste for the bill, beginning a “KILL the BILL” campaign this week and splitting with Trump and Republican leadership.
The White House and Republican leadership have stood behind the bill despite Musk’s comments.