EXCLUSIVE — Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) sees room for bipartisan deal-making beyond healthcare next year as Republicans try to keep affordability from becoming a 2026 stumbling block.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Thune said the GOP’s tax law, passed this summer along party lines, will be a selling point for Republican candidates fighting to preserve their Senate majority, arguing that his conference has not had the time to message its impact on voters appropriately.
But he also believes there’s an appetite for election-year legislating that could buttress their economic message, naming energy permitting and a sprawling housing bill as two areas for reform that have the support of Democrats.
“I think it’s partly a function of, we just haven’t gotten out and told the story, and then it’s also a function of staying focused on the issues that matter to people,” Thune said.
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Thune is still hoping for a bipartisan deal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year, albeit with new limits on eligibility, and in the absence of an agreement could back a GOP-only approach to the rising cost of premiums like the one pursued in the House.
“You have to have a viable alternative,” Thune added, “so we’re going to continue to focus on that issue.”
But he has reason to be optimistic that there could be other building blocks for an affordability message. Congress nearly included legislation geared toward increasing the country’s housing supply in this year’s defense bill, while a competing House proposal advanced out of the Financial Services Committee this week in a 50-1 vote.
The House also voted to speed up the permitting of energy projects before leaving for the Christmas recess, and though the bill included a concession to the conservative Freedom Caucus that turned off all but 11 Democrats, the product crafted in the Senate is likely to strike a middle ground.
“People will go to their respective corners and towel off and get ready to duke it out for the fall elections, but I still think there are some things that are clearly, hugely bipartisan,” Thune said.
That legislative focus is unfolding against the backdrop of President Donald Trump downplaying what he calls an affordability “hoax.” Democrats have staked their return to power on blaming Republicans for stubbornly high inflation and believe they can make inroads next year shifting blame from former President Joe Biden to Trump.
“I’m going to talk all the time about Donald Trump’s belief that higher cost is a ‘hoax,’ because it’s proof to people that he’s living a fantasy life that has nothing to do with theirs,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), a member of Senate Democrats’ leadership team, told the Washington Examiner.
In the healthcare debate, that political dynamic poses a challenge to getting the Obamacare subsidies renewed and for 43 days fanned a record-setting government shutdown.
Thune nodded to Trump’s frustration over the Democratic messaging, and Republicans, too, continue to argue that Trump’s policies are an answer to, not a source of, the rising cost of goods.
“I think that his purpose in saying that is to point out that affordability, and inflation in particular, is something that was a crowning achievement — or underachievement — of the Biden administration,” Thune said of Trump’s “hoax” remark, blaming “profligate spending” under Biden for a post-pandemic spike in prices.
Still, Thune is heeding complaints from within his own conference that Republicans can’t be seen as resting on their laurels and need more than the megabill that passed in July if they hope to neutralize Democrats’ marquee campaign message.
“I think part of it is going to be incumbent upon the president and upon all of us to remind people, not only of the Biden administration policies and how they hated them because of what they did in terms of their pocketbooks, inflation, but also the things that we’re doing to change that,” Thune said.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who aligns with Trump’s populist streak and broke ranks this month to vote for a simple extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, rattled off proposals with bipartisan backing that he said Republicans could pass to show they take affordability seriously. They included raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and indexing it to inflation, removing taxes on healthcare services, and further increasing the child tax credit.
“I just hope that we’re not going to slip into the mentality that we think that we’ve done everything we should do, and ‘this is just great,’ and we’ll just spend the next year messaging,” Hawley told the Washington Examiner. “I think we need to spend the next year acting.”
Thune is also being asked by some in his conference to pursue another party-line bill through reconciliation, a budget process that lets Republicans sidestep the filibuster.
“Why we haven’t been working on a second bill since we passed the first one, I have no idea,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said. “The perception among many people out there in America is that we’re not doing anything about the cost of living. Well, we are. But perception is reality in politics.”
Thune has left the door open to reconciliation, which Republicans used to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, but suggested he’s waiting to see if bipartisan healthcare talks pan out first and appears reluctant to pursue that avenue without clear political support for it.
On the tax front, Republicans believe voters will reward them for some of Trump’s campaign promises that became law, including “no tax on tips” and overtime pay. Those breaks are set to kick in next year and will be important to how Republicans frame the bill as Democrats focus on its cuts to Medicaid.
“People have to feel it, and they’ve got to see it in their pocketbooks,” Thune said of the tax breaks.
In terms of bipartisan legislation, he cited cross-aisle conversations on permitting reform when asked why he thinks Congress can defy the morass of election-year politics.
“There are some that are going to be are challenging, but I’ve had Dems talk to me about permitting reform, and everybody realizes whether it’s a conventional energy project or renewable energy project, the need for more energy, particularly with data centers and AI and new demands like that, is going to be pretty, pretty intense, and I think there’s an interest on both sides of doing something.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), slated to become the No. 2 Senate Democrat next year, told reporters on Thursday that he was “bullish” on both permitting reform and housing.
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In the interview, Thune also named legislation building on a landmark cryptocurrency bill that Trump signed into law in July, as well as a “skinny” agriculture bill, as priorities that could attract bipartisan support.
“There’s a whole bunch of things I think we can tee up, and I’m hoping that Democrats want to play ball, at least a lot of them, and work with us,” Thune said.