Welcome to Washington: The Republican Trifecta Splinters

It is more likely than not that President Trump will have only 60 working days left to have a substantive effect on American law. As candidates race toward the midterm elections, GOP leaders on Capitol Hill are making clear that it will not be a jovial legislative process going forward, despite their control of both the House and Senate. Welcome to Washington, where lawmakers are back home in their districts and states, or off fundraising, as a two-week congressional recess begins. Though there had been high hopes that a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security would materialize last week, Senate Republicans ended up caving to Democrats’ demand that ICE and Border Patrol not be funded, which in turn enraged House Republicans. When Speaker Mike Johnson put a clean funding extension for DHS on the floor Friday, it passed with a few Democratic votes. What Senator Chuck Schumer has made clear, however, is that he and his colleagues view the Senate-passed bill as the only viable option. “With the division and intransigence among Republicans it is clear that this is a Republican shutdown,” Mr. Schumer’s office claimed in a statement Sunday night.Mr. Schumer had “made clear that Democrats would not accept anything less than what was passed unanimously by the Senate,” his office added. “Republicans shouldn’t look to Senate Democrats to fix their own internal caucus problems.”As of Monday, there are only 60 working legislative days left before the midterm elections in early November. Senator John Thune and other GOP leaders are now considering one last party-line bill to fund DHS and other Republican priorities. That process, known as reconciliation, would allow the GOP to pass legislation on a simple-majority vote, bypassing the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, though every part of the bill must deal primarily with spending and revenues. Senator Ron Johnson told “Sunday Morning Futures” that he believes reconciliation is the only path forward because the Democrats are not working in good faith. “We need to move to a reconciliation appropriations process because Democrats are going to continue to obstruct this,” he argued, saying that the reconciliation process should be “very focused” on just a few key items, like funding the rest of DHS. “The fact of the matter is, as long as we have the ability to stop legislation with the 60-vote threshold, we’re gonna have these problems in the Senate.”A fellow Senate conservative, Senator Rick Scott, has a less optimistic view, however. He told The New York Sun this week that trying to go forward with a reconciliation process would be a messy, potentially divisive affair. “I think it’s gonna be very hard,” Mr. Scott told the Sun. “We watched the reconciliation process last year with the big, beautiful bill, and it ended up being a train where everybody put all their ideas on there.”Mr. Scott added that “it’s not a bill that, you know — I liked the tax cuts, but the rest of it, you know, it was pretty frustrating.”The number-four House Republican, Congresswoman Lisa McClain, put it in more straightforward terms during her own appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures.” With a narrow majority in the House, she worries that embarking on a reconciliation bill could all be for naught. “We have a one-seat majority,” Ms. McClain said. “I hope we could do a reconciliation [bill], but hope isn’t a strategy.”What is even more dangerous to the governing majority is Mr. Trump himself. He has embraced House Republicans’ position on the DHS spending bill, according to the speaker, though his demand that the SAVE America Act — a bill to require photo ID when voting and proof of citizenship when registering — be attached to the next bill that comes to his desks imperils the legislative priorities of individual members. As the bill’s own sponsor, Senator Mike Lee, has noted, the legislation is almost certain to not survive the reconciliation process because it has little to do with spending or revenue. “The SAVE AMERICA Act can’t be passed through reconciliation,” he said bluntly in a post on X Saturday night. Even if Congress could kick off a reconciliation fight — which would include passing preliminary bills just to begin the process, only for other committees to write up components, which would then lead to days of debate — Mr. Trump’s insistence that the voting bill be added could well threaten whatever Messrs. Thune and Johnson are able to get on the floor. “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and get our airports, and everything else, moving again. Also, add the complete, all five items, SAVE AMERICA ACT items. Go for the Gold!!!” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Welcome to Washington: The Republican Trifecta Splinters

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