Senate Republicans are planning to take another crack at the budget reconciliation process after narrowly passing President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ earlier this month.
The $3.3 trillion legislative behemoth, which permanently extended many of the provisions of the president’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and included reforms and work requirements for Medicaid and food assistance programs, and billions in spending for defense and border security, only passed the Senate with the aid of Vice President JD Vance.
Now, lawmakers are eying another shot at the grueling process.
Sen. Ron Johnson, one of the key holdouts that eventually backed the bill, said he gained a fair amount of confidence from the White House, Trump and Senate GOP leadership that Republicans would ‘have a second bite of the apple.’
‘I think I pretty well have a commitment,’ the Wisconsin Republican said. ‘They’re going to do that, and we’re going to set a process, line by line, program by program.’
‘Another reason why I definitely had to vote ‘yes’ is I would have just dealt myself out of being involved in that process, and I want to be highly involved in that for the next process,’ he continued.
And Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., another fiscal hawk that was wary of supporting the bill but ultimately voted for it, told Fox News Digital, ‘I think we still have to definitely do one more this year, so we’ll see if that’s what happens.’
Johnson speculated that lawmakers could tackle the process, which allows Republicans to skirt the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate but must comply with stringent Senate rules, in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins in October.
The senator has an ally in House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who shortly after the ‘big, beautiful bill’ passed out of the House and onto Trump’s desk said, ‘We’re going to do this again.’
‘We’re gonna have a second reconciliation package in the fall and a third in the spring of next year,’ Johnson said on Fox News’ ‘The Ingraham Angle.’
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., another fiscal hawk who criticized the Senate’s changes to the initial reconciliation bill but voted for it in the end, said another reconciliation bill was ‘absolutely’ feasible.
He’s gunning for more spending cuts and more ends to ‘government giveaways,’ but noted the looming 2026 election season put them on a short timeline, however.
‘[Trump will] have a better chance now, because you don’t have to deal with the filibuster, where you can get 50% plus one. If there’s ever a chance to do it, we need to do it now, because the midterms are coming up in the middle of next year. So really we need to push for the next eight months,’ Norman said.
Initially, Senate Republicans had pushed for a two-bill track, something that the speaker said would not be feasible in the House because of the varying factions, and red lines, throughout the conference.
But now Senate leadership may be more cautious given the series of hurdles facing the upper chamber in the coming months, including advancing a $9.4 billion clawback package this week which is already facing headwinds among pockets of Senate Republicans.
A senior GOP aide told Fox News Digital that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was open to another reconciliation package, but ‘is heavily focused on selling the last bill and highlighting all it does.’
‘At this point it’s premature to even think of what could be in a second one,’ the aide said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital that ‘we want to do one more reconciliation package,’ and echoed the speaker’s sentiment that more could be done.
First, however, lawmakers have to get through the looming government funding fight with Senate Democrats.
Currently, Senate spending panels are going through mark-ups on the dozen funding bills needed to keep the government’s lights on, but Mullin, who chairs the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, believed that another government funding extension was on the horizon.
‘It looks like we’re screaming straight toward a [continuing resolution], and we have to have, we’re going to have to figure out how to avoid a Schumer shutdown, because they’re not going to be helpful in passing it,’ he said.
Getting every Senate Republican, or even a majority, to go forward with reconciliation once more may be a challenge.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was the key vote that advanced the Senate’s first crack at reconciliation back to the House, after hours of floor negotiations and rewritten provisions that would give a boost to Alaska were added to the package.
But she seemed disinterested in taking another crack at the intensive process.
‘No, no,’ Murkowski told Fox News Digital. ‘I want to legislate.’
