Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune is pushing for two major partisan bills next term, including one within the first 30 days of the Trump administration, he told Republican senators at a private GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with his remarks.
Thune was broadly outlining priorities for the next Congress during the closed-door meeting. He said the first of the two pieces of legislation, which would pass under a process known as budget reconciliation that can bypass the Senate filibuster, would focus on the border, defense and energy. A subsequent package would focus on taxes and other priorities for the Trump administration.
It’d be a significant first swing at legislation for Thune — 30 days is an ambitious timeline, even for a targeted package. While reconciliation would allow Republicans to pass priorities with no Democratic support, bills that pass under the process are often large and tricky to wrangle. GOP leaders could see significant complications given the House’s thin majority and the need to pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian.
Still, Republicans have been mapping out potential reconciliation priorities since earlier this year in hopes of taking back the Senate, House and presidency.
And Thune wasn’t the only one who spoke at the policy conference Tuesday. President-elect Donald Trump called into the meeting, according to a spokesperson for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Speaker Mike Johnson also spoke, according to a person familiar with the gathering. House Republican leaders had previously indicated they wanted a reconciliation package within the first 100 days of Trump’s administration.
Measures passed through reconciliation must be related to the federal budget, and have more of an impact on spending than policy. The Senate parliamentarian can dub a measure irrelevant to the budget and rule that it can’t be included in a reconciliation deal.
Thune also stressed that votes on the Senate floor — which frequently run longer than an hour — will no longer be held open indefinitely. Senators were also told to expect more work on Fridays and potentially weekends; typically, the Senate leaves town on Thursday afternoon and returns Monday evenings. Both pieces will likely be welcome news to Republican senators who’ve been haranguing leadership for a return to so-called regular order.
Emma Dumain and Andres Picon contributed to this report.