The News
After weeks of intraparty disarray and tariff stress, the Republican Congress finally has something to celebrate.
Let’s just say they’re not planning a blowout.
After battling for months over whether to get President Donald Trump’s agenda done in one big bill or two on national security and taxes, the House and Senate are finally aligned. But there are huge GOP fights still to come over about Medicaid, spending cuts, the debt ceiling and tax rates — all against the backdrop of economic uncertainty sparked by tariffs that many Republicans just want to discard.
“Now you’ve got to actually write these bills,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Semafor. “If this gets to be a long, drawn out and neverending process, then everything we worried about with the big beautiful bill comes true.”
All is certainly not well in the Republican Party, despite the respite brought by Trump’s pauses on some tariffs and the agenda breakthrough. Stock markets were down along with the dollar on Thursday after a Wednesday bounceback and Treasury bond yields remained elevated, a sign that investors are still wary of Trump’s remaining tariffs.
“I’m not a fan. I guess the purpose is raising revenue. I’m far more concerned about shrinking the size of the beast, rather than funding it,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Semafor. “I’m hoping he has got a strategy of bringing people to the negotiating table. And the best case results of this will be no tariffs.”
As they navigate all that economic noise, Republicans need to start putting together tax cuts that can pass both chambers of Congress — which will be partially paid for with spending cuts.
GOP lawmakers in both chambers needed some handholding to even get to this stage, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., standing beside House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Thursday to emphasize their shared goals.
That followed Trump reassuring Senate conservatives last week on the exact same matter.
“What I’m most concerned about is, we’ll ditch all the spending cuts and just do the tax bill in the end,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “We have a famous tradition around here of eating our dessert and not our vegetables.”
Part of conservatives’ heartburn: There’s a big gap between the House’s $1.5 trillion spending cut floor and the Senate’s $4 billion floor, which was installed to prevent the bill from losing future filibuster protections if Republicans can’t hit their spending cut targets. The House doesn’t think the Senate will end up meeting their mark on cuts, although some GOP senators actually want to go much higher than the House’s number.
It’s the latest episode in a long-running drama of distrust between Senate Republicans and House Republicans.
One senator, “who I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for, told me that ‘it shouldn’t be that big of a concern.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, well, I’m just an idiot that does math,’” Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., said.
“We defy a lot of laws of logic,” Huizenga added, but “we cannot defy the basic laws of mathematics.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., spoke for many on his side of the Capitol: “House Republicans are more aspirational in what they would like to do versus what reality will allow them.”
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The cross-Capitol Republican tension started to flare last year, as Senate GOP leaders opposed a bipartisan tax bill passed by the House. The beef intensified after Trump took office, as Johnson and Thune each sought different strategies to pass his agenda.
The House plan to pass one bill eventually won out, but the Senate maintains plenty of leverage. With Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., opposed to Republicans’ plan because it would raise the debt ceiling, only three more defections could bring down a tax and border mega-bill.
There are already three strong opponents of cutting Medicaid benefits: Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“I’m concerned about how we’re going to figure out how we do this between the two bodies. I’m going to be worried about Medicaid until we get on the other side of this,” Murkowski said on Thursday.
In addition, Paul, Murkowski, Collins, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted to overturn Trump’s tariffs on Canada. The House has made it much more difficult to bring such votes to the floor, a restriction on dissent that Paul called “obscene.” Even if free traders rebel against Trump’s tariffs in the Senate, it’s unlikely to go anywhere in the House.
At least there’s a two-week recess starting on Friday.
“I think it helps that the Congress is getting out of here,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told Semafor. “Two weeks where we’re not a distraction is a positive thing. So I think the markets might settle a little.”
Burgess and Eleanor’s View
This week may be the eye of the storm.
Hill Republicans breathed a sigh of relief when Trump pressed pause on his tariffs Wednesday afternoon and another when Johnson again pulled off the seemingly impossible on Thursday.
Neither of those developments solve the underlying economic problems ahead — and GOP lawmakers are just as aware of that as investors.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., summed up the prevailing view among GOP realists by saying that Trump’s pause “probably slows down any escalation,” but “it doesn’t do much for certainty.” House Republicans, meanwhile, are painfully aware they agreed Thursday to advance the Senate’s proposal with little more than a handshake agreement.
“I trust the president, but I don’t trust the Senate,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said Wednesday before voting yes.
Room for Disagreement
Some Republican lawmakers brush off the idea of friction between the House and the Senate.
“What Speaker Johnson’s delivered — between a budget resolution, a year-long CR and now another budget resolution — it’s becoming a fairly predictable outcome,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told Semafor. “With narrow victories — but a win is a win.”
What’s more, Trump still wields considerable power when it comes to smoothing GOP fault lines.
Fiscal hawks who wound up voting for the resolution Thursday were “looking for an off-ramp — because what was coming next was a lot of pressure from the president,” said Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of two GOP “no” votes.