Tuesday’s the day House Republicans are hoping to put one reconciliation bill behind them and start moving on another.
But like everything else for the House GOP over the past 18 months, it’s not so simple. Party leaders still aren’t sure if they’ll have the votes to send their long-brewing immigration enforcement bill to President Donald Trump.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), for one, said Monday night that he informed the GOP whip team he’s undecided on the procedural vote needed to put the Senate-passed bill on the floor.
“We’re literally bending over backwards just to get back to the status quo and to remove people that are just going to come back in four years under the next administration, because we’re not codifying anything,” Roy said.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent member of the GOP conference, said he’d oppose the bill: “I’ve made clear I will not support it unless reforms have been enacted and that position hasn’t changed.”
Other members are on the GOP watchlist, and with primary elections happening in four states today, attendance will be a concern. At least one Republican on the ballot, Rep. Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota, will be on hand today to vote for the GOP bill.
The uncertainty over what has become known as “Reconciliation 2.0,” however, isn’t stopping House Republicans from gearing up for another, longer-shot party-line bill ahead of the midterms.
The Republican Study Committee hosted the top nonpartisan legislative scoring officials for a Monday night briefing on the fiscal details surrounding the process of assembling that bill.
“We’re still early on in this process, but yes, this is a ‘let’s get ahead of it,’” RSC Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas) said. “The better truth we have here, the more accurate that product is, the more we can do.”
In a separate private meeting of senior House Republicans in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) suggested adding some partisan pieces of the regular appropriations process into the bill, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.
That would not only infuriate Democrats, but it’s already unsettling some Republican appropriators who are wary of further eroding Congress’ power to oversee federal spending on a bipartisan basis.
Harris declined to confirm what he said inside the room. But as an appropriator who also leads the hard-line Freedom Caucus, he said he was all in on Reconciliation 3.0: “Plenty of fraud, waste and abuse left on the table. We’ll see where that goes.”
Top leaders are speaking more carefully. Johnson acknowledged in an interview Monday night that the appropriations idea “came up today” but added, “I’m not committing to anything. There are lots of ideas on the table.”
Majority Leader Steve Scalise cautioned the entire process is still in flux: “We’re far from agreement on 3.0.”
What else we’re watching:
— GOP HOPES FOR PULTE OFF-RAMP: Republicans are largely leaving it to the Trump administration to figure out a path forward to renew a major government surveillance program before it expires Friday. Democrats are calling on Trump to remove Bill Pulte, an ally of the president’s with no national security experience, as acting director of national intelligence before they support the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Pulte’s future is expected to come up when Johnson speaks with Trump at the White House later today.
— HOUSE WEIGHS INTO CRYPTO TAX DEBATE: House Ways and Means will hold a 2 p.m. hearing today on seven draft bills that, taken together, could establish the rules of the road for taxing cryptocurrency. Chair Jason Smith and other tax writers, however, face an uphill battle to clinch a crypto tax package this year. It would have to be bipartisan, and right now plenty of Democrats are treading carefully on the matter.
Katherine Tully-McManus, Calen Razor and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.