Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., defied expectations and kept his fractured conference together to pass several priority items before House members jetted home on Thursday to kick off a five-week recess.
But how much of that legislation their colleagues in the Senate will take up is a different question, as divisions continue to deepen.
The House adopted a GOP-backed budget resolution along party lines on Wednesday, taking the first step toward passing a $95 billion reconciliation package that’s focused mostly on the Iran war.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has remained lukewarm on such a package, especially if it includes certain aspects of the so-called SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID at the polls.
“I can’t count 50 right now on a budget resolution,” Thune told reporters on Thursday. He said the path to clearing the chamber’s so-called Byrd bath, which assesses compliance with reconciliation rules, “is still an open question.”
“The math on that hasn’t changed,” he said, noting that any voter ID provisions would need to be “incentive-based and principally budgetary, not policy.”
The House also passed a bill that would extend current government funding until December, hoping to free up time ahead of the midterm elections and stave off the usual end-of-September headache of preventing a government shutdown. But Thune this week threatened to hold the budget resolution as a possible vehicle for government funding as he seeks his own bipartisan funding deal.
President’s ‘patience’
In delaying reconciliation movement, the Senate Republican leader also threatens to further widen the fissure growing between his office and the Oval; tensions between him and President Donald Trump publicly escalated this week.
Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt this week both lobbed public criticisms at Thune over SAVE, with Leavitt saying the president’s “patience is running out.”
Thune on Thursday pushed back, saying Leavitt or “somebody else” should “get on the phone and get the votes.”
Many in the Senate Republican conference are increasingly frustrated by the White House’s hyperfixation on the voter ID legislation and the finger-pointing at Thune as they eye what could possibly be the last legislative weeks of their GOP trifecta in Washington.
“I don’t know who it was that sold the president on this idea that this was attainable, but it’s creating a circular firing squad for Republicans,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “And here we are, what? One-hundred and three days before the midterm elections? This is not a great place for us.”
“We just don’t have the votes,” said Cornyn, who lost to a Trump-backed opponent in the primary, referring to the sweeping election bill. “There’s nothing that Sen. Thune can do to change that.”
Thune has said that finding a bipartisan solution on government funding is his “priority.” And while he’s keeping the GOP’s budget resolution in his back pocket, he and others want to first seek a stopgap solution.
“The House will send us something, and then hopefully we’ll be able to modify it so that we can get Democrat votes on it,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Tuesday, before the House passed its version. “And if we can get Democrat votes on it, send it back to the House.”
Thune said this week he intends to bring a bill to the floor “before the August break.”
War powers, stock trading ban
In a win for Democrats, the House for a second time voted to formally call on Trump to end the war in Iran, approving 214-208 a nonbinding concurrent resolution by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
But Senate Democrats fell just a few votes short on a similar push Thursday, when the chamber voted down a procedural motion to discharge a joint resolution led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Although the chambers split on success, the votes indicated that political pressure on the White House to exit the war is only increasing.
The House also approved a bill that would rein in their own ability to trade stocks, although the widely popular idea fell victim to a party-line vote.
The GOP-backed bill would ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying new stocks. Republicans also added unrelated language that would require voters in federal elections to show photo ID at the polls — a nod to Trump’s broader election bill ambitions.
Only 13 Democrats voted in favor of the GOP bill. Other Democrats argued that the proposal doesn’t go far enough, and that a true stock trading ban needs to bar stock ownership entirely or extend beyond Congress to the president.
Rebecca Kheel, John Donnelly, John T. Bennett, Aris Folley and Jacob Fulton contributed to this report.
