This week, senators were furiously lobbying Republican leadership and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) to make changes to the Senate GOP reconciliation bill, hoping to clinch deals on everything from Medicaid to Inflation Reduction Act tax credits in time to start debate on the bill by early next week. Leadership wants to release the full bill at the beginning of next week and start the process of getting the “vote-a-rama” set up by the end of next week. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), however, predicted that if the bill was brought to the floor next week that it would fail.
Even if the bill makes it out of the Senate, it faces major headwinds in the House as a growing number of House Republicans say they’re opposed to the bill as written. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said that his main takeaway from the bill is that it is “definitely dead if it were to come over to the House in anything resembling its current form.” Roy also said the GOP leadership’s self-imposed July 4th deadline is “a real question at this point.” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, however, insisted to senators during a meeting on Wednesday that July 4th remains the goal as far as President Trump is concerned. The release of an estimate of the cost of the full Senate reconciliation bill from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) could also be delayed as Senate Finance Chair Crapo insists that the CBO use the “current policy baseline” to account for the cost of the reconciliation bill, which is not how forecasters normally estimate the cost of bills and would certainly reduce the estimated cost of the Senate legislation.