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Incoming Senate Republican leader John Thune on Tuesday outlined an aggressive 2025 schedule for the party, anchored by plans for two filibuster-proof bills designed to spend on border security and cut taxes.
The agenda that Thune pitched his colleagues is ambitious in its call for two party-line bills before 2026. When Democrats took power in 2021 with the same complete control of Washington that Republicans recently won, it took them more than a year to pass their second filibuster-proof bill for outgoing President Joe Biden to sign.
Republicans are aiming for a bill early next year that would address border security as well as defense and energy policy, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bill would likely include money to continue work on the border wall President-elect Donald Trump has championed, as well as to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, a second person familiar with party strategy told Semafor.
The party will simultaneously begin gaming out a larger, more complex bill next year that will address expiring tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term. That legislation would not be due until the end of the year, when those 2017 tax cuts are set to expire.
Thune outlined his plans during a Senate GOP retreat at the Library of Congress, which featured House Speaker Mike Johnson in attendance and a phone call from Trump.
Republicans are going to face plenty of challenges making good on their planned agenda: Their infinitesimal majority in the House will make it harder for Johnson to pass both party-line bills in 2025, not to mention the two budget resolutions that are required in order to advance those bills. The GOP cannot protect its bills from a Democratic filibuster without those budget resolutions, which permit party-line votes in the Senate under strict conditions known as reconciliation.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do to get on the same page with the budget, and then the various bills. So I’m anxious to get that started, hopefully even before the president is sworn in,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Semafor on Monday.
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Republicans’ plan aligns with how Democrats treated their full control of Washington in 2021 and how the GOP behaved in 2017 under the same conditions. But this time, Trump’s party hopes for quicker success than in the past; under Biden, for example, Democrats passed a hefty Covid aid bill within weeks but then struggled on a second attempt at party-line policymaking.
As Cornyn hinted, Republicans signaled this week that they may try to pass a budget resolution before Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20, which would allow for faster consideration of the border and energy policy bill. Thune told GOP senators that he wants to move a “targeted” reconciliation package as quickly as the new Congress and administration can do so.
The 2017 GOP majority also set out to pass two reconciliation bills in one year, but faceplanted on its plans to repeal Obamacare, eventually pivoting to focus on what became the Trump tax cut bill. The 2021 Democratic majority eventually settled for an energy and health care-focused bill negotiated with Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., that passed close to the 2022 election.
The 2025 Republican majority will try to avoid those pitfalls, but the slim House majority and ideologically diverse Senate majority aren’t their only problems. Ultimately, the Senate parliamentarian will have to sign off on Republicans’ reconciliation bills, which can lose their filibuster protection if specific elements don’t have a direct budgetary effect.
That constraint has limited immigration policy changes in the past, but Republicans are going to get creative.
“We’re going to put everything that is legally possible to put in, is my prediction,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.
Johnson spokesman Taylor Haulsee said in a statement that the Louisiana Republican “had a productive discussion with Senate Republicans, where he emphasized the need for unity heading into the first 100 days agenda next year given the different margins in the House and Senate.”
Thune is also pursuing a breakneck legislative schedule that means more work days for the Senate. He has outlined voting on Fridays (the Senate often works Monday through Thursday regardless of the party in charge) and shutting down floor votes that can drag on for more than an hour, a post-pandemic quirk that annoys more timely senators in both parties.
Republicans want to move Trump’s nominees starting Jan. 20, too, which could require weekend work for the Senate if Democrats fight quick confirmation of top officials. And Thune also wants to reboot the broken federal spending process, a big task considering that it’s been decades since Congress passed individual spending bills on time.
Burgess’s view
Thune ran his leadership campaign as a different kind of GOP leader, prevailing in a tough race against Cornyn last month by pitching himself as an experienced hand who can work with Trump. Now he’s proposing a 2025 schedule that will run up against the limits of both senators’ stamina and the party’s slim majorities in both chambers of Congress.
He’ll have backup, though, if he works in tandem with Trump. During Trump’s call with GOP senators on Tuesday, Trump congratulated Thune and predicted the two will work well together.
Kadia Goba contributed.