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John Barrasso keeps a leather whip from Wyoming on display in his leadership office just off the Senate floor. He hasn’t had to use it yet to corral Republican votes… yet.
The Wyoming senator is preparing for perhaps the toughest grind of his political career, as Republicans look past their clash over sequencing President Donald Trump’s agenda and toward passing it. Republicans agree about extending expiring tax cuts, but many of them diverge from there about corresponding spending cuts and which taxes to prioritize.
When a final bill comes to the Senate floor, it will be Barrasso’s job to find 50 votes for it. Republicans needed almost a full calendar year to pass their 2017 tax cut package, but Barrasso wants “to get this done much sooner than that.”
“Not because of some deadline date, but because the sooner we can get our comprehensive economic plan in place, the better it’s going to be,” Barrasso told Semafor in an interview. “The more certainty people have that their taxes aren’t going to go up, the more certainty people are going to have as investors to make commitments to our economy.”
Taxes are one of the few things congressional Republicans seem to have much sway over in Washington these days, as Trump’s unilateral tariff regime causes economic upheaval and he reshapes government through executive actions. So when Barrasso says he wants to provide certainty to investors, he’s reflecting congressional Republicans’ thinking about how they can help stabilize the economy while Trump fights a trade war.
It will be a huge challenge, one that requires wrangling big personalities in both chambers of Congress and the Trump administration. Barrasso’s colleagues say he’s got the light touch needed.
“He’s kind of a finesse guy,” said his junior Wyoming senator, Cynthia Lummis. “Going between the Senate, the House and the White House these days is kind of a high-wire act for all of them. And he’s right in the middle of it.”
Medicaid is already emerging as a flash point that could sink the entire endeavor if Republicans cut too aggressively. Barrasso is not from a state that expanded Medicaid after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, but many of his GOP colleagues are.
He has ideas about how to save money on Medicaid without cutting benefits: Restrict the ability of states to offer health coverage to undocumented immigrants, impose work requirements on Medicaid expansion recipients, and end the practice of double-paying insurers for people who move to a new state.
“I listen to the members. And talking to members, they realize there is a lot of waste and fraud and abuse in Medicaid right now. No one wants to cut anybody who Medicaid was designed to help,” Barrasso said.
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Hailing from an ultra-conservative Western state, Barrasso is a pugnacious partisan who criticizes Democrats with zeal and rarely breaks from Trump. He was the first high-ranking member of GOP leadership to endorse Trump in 2024, which helped him lock up the whip job and proved useful on tough votes, like confirmation of the president’s Cabinet.
Republicans have lost one high-profile vote: A resolution to overturn Trump’s tariffs on Canada. They defeated a close Medicaid amendment on the budget last week, leaning in part on Finance Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and former Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas (both members of Barrasso’s whip team).
Barrasso roams the floor during votes on those amendments, sometimes whipping live as things draw to a close. His biggest daily headache is often attendance — particularly on Fridays.
And if Barrasso has his hands full, he can call in powerful reinforcements.
“I think of President Trump as a member of the whip team,” Barrasso said.
The GOP ran in 2024 on Trump’s platform of border security and lowering prices. Barrasso noted that border crossings have fallen sharply since Inauguration Day, but he conceded the jury is still out on the economy; he’s betting that, politically speaking, voters will “make that decision as it gets closer to the election.”
“The president is going to be judged a big success on the border. Always, the No. 1 issue is the economy,” Barrasso said. “And it’s too early to tell, because people are going to make a decision about how much money they have in their pockets, how far it goes, and can they do what they want to do for their family economically.”
The View From A New Senator
Barrasso earned sway with the conference over the past year by hitting the campaign trail with candidates who would become his colleagues. With such a large new Senate class, getting to know those members before they were sworn in was a top priority.
“When he needs to be tough, he’s tough; when he needs to be soft, he’s soft,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, who met Barrasso on the campaign trail. “I consider him to be a mentor. He hasn’t had to be tough on me. I’m a team player.”
Burgess’s view
Barrasso isn’t a nationally known figure like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, but his job means he ranks higher in the party and is vital to clinching Trump’s agenda. The president has left a lot of the details of his tax plan to Congress to figure out, and Thune and Barrasso will need to coordinate closely to balance the priorities of their members against the House GOP and the White House.
Republicans already survived two symbolic “vote-a-ramas” on budget resolutions and emerged without Democratic victories.
They haven’t faced the toughest one: The final, unlimited vote-a-rama can change the text of the tax bill, unlike the votes that came before. Barrasso will have to hold his party together on the floor through that obstacle course for it to become law.
Notable
- Republicans are still reminiscing about another Wyoming whip, the recently deceased, blunt-talking Alan Simpson, per USA Today.
- Barrasso recently brought some Wyoming coal onto the Senate floor, as C-SPAN captured.