Republican leaders in Congress are having a tough time figuring out how to pass Donald Trump’s agenda.
Since Trump’s election, congressional Republicans have been divided over how to proceed: Write one giant, sweeping bill containing more or less everything in Trump’s agenda—immigration and border security, tax reform, and energy policy being three key blocs—or to proceed via two or more smaller bills. Speaker Mike Johnson prefered one bill, Politico reports, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune thinks tax policies should be in a separate bill.
Trump, however, told Johnson that he wants “one big beautiful bill,” the speaker told his caucus Saturday, but Republicans in the Senate said that they were still figuring out the right strategy.
“We’re working through all that,” Thune said. “The process issues to me are a lot less important than the results.”
Other Republicans in the House, such as Representative Jason Smith, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, also favor the one-bill approach. Trump said publicly on Sunday that he wanted one large bill, but only hours later, confusingly seemed to signal he’d be open to two bills.
Whatever ends up being the final approach, it’s going to divide Republicans in one or both of the chambers. Historically, the one-bill strategy hasn’t worked well for either party, as Democrats who backed the “Build Back Better” bill under Biden remember. That bill was supposed to pass in 2021, but ended up being weakened, only passing in the form of the scaled-down Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022.
There’s also the problem of the looming debt limit, which many Republicans oppose raising. The next budget now has a condition of a $2.5 trillion spending cut thanks to the last budget deal made last month. That will put a lot of Trump’s wishes in jeopardy and could result in another government shutdown if it isn’t prioritized.
Republicans can only afford to lose one vote in the House, and three in the Senate, making the odds of getting full agreement on a big bill pretty slim. Can Trump help everyone iron out their differences to help him get what he wants? History shows that he hasn’t been a unifying leader, even in his own party.
