Senate Republicans in no hurry to deliver Trump's next reconciliation bill

Source: Politico

06/18/2026 04:45 AM EDT


President Donald Trump is calling for Republicans to pass a $350 billion bill to fund the military while notching conservative policy victories — and GOP senators aren’t exactly scurrying to action. House Republican leaders and committee chairs have been meeting for weeks about what to include in a new party-line reconciliation package. Speaker Mike Johnson has also had conversations about the House’s vision with Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

But the Senate has taken no concrete steps toward advancing a bill, and GOP senators and aides said this week it was becoming clear any “Reconciliation 3.0” would be a House-led effort. Multiple Senate Republicans — including members of leadership — say they don’t currently see a path that could marshall 50 votes behind such a measure on their side of the Capitol just months before the midterms.

“Everybody has a different concept of what they want, which is going to be the problem,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview this week.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said a third bill “doesn’t look to me like it’s got a lot of life in it,” while Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) separately warned that if his party was going to pass a third reconciliation bill, Republicans need to “saddle up and ride hard, because we’re running out of time.”. “You don’t have to be a senior at Cal Tech to know that the closer you get to the midterms, the harder it is to get anything done around here,” Kennedy added.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/17/senate-republicans-in-no-hurry-to-deliver-trumps-next-reconciliation-bill-00966498?utm_medium=activitypub&utm_source=flipboard