How Trump's agenda complicates midterm races for Republicans
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Members of Congress are racing to get out the door to start campaigning for the midterms. President Trump is already out on the campaign trail, even as his policies are creating political problems for his party. It's time for our weekly roundup of political news, so let's go. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Claudia DeSales. I cover Congress. And I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. So, Claudia, the Republican-led House narrowly passed a few items this week before leaving for the August recess, and I want to walk through some of them. So let's start with this. On Wednesday, House Republicans passed a $95 billion budget resolution, which is the first step in the reconciliation process, which of course means you now need to explain what reconciliation is for the third time.
Right. I forget. So totally, I need to remind myself too. But basically, reconciliation is a way for the majority party to move a partisan bill without having to worry about getting 60 votes in the Senate. So that's overcoming what we know as the filibuster.
What legislative wins did House Republicans push before the August recess?
There are a lot of caveats to that. These need to have impacts on the budget in terms of whatever these changes are. And so it's going to be a tricky process, even though the House was celebrating, they overcame a lot of hurdles, and they made a lot of legislative wins by doing that and keeping their conference together for the most part. And this is one of the biggest ones because the Reconciliation 3.0 was very much in doubt for a very long time, especially after they had the first version last year, 1.0, which was known as the One Big Beautiful Build. They didn't think they could come back, but they did. And here we go. Okay, so Reconciliation 3.0, what is actually in this thing? What are they trying to do?
Well, this, and we should note, this is really an idea that's coming from House Republicans. It's got a long ways to go to see if the Senate will go along. I think it's also coming from the White House. Exactly.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
I mean, just to jump in here briefly, I mean, this is, like you said, the third time this process is happening. It happened with the Big Beautiful Bill, like you mentioned. It happened with funding for DHS. This is like a larger process here of the president having a very specific agenda that he's trying to push with a lot of control over the Republican Party. And Republicans in the House, correct me if I'm wrong, Claudia, being like, this is the method we got to use. And if it worked once, if it worked twice, it might work three times. And we're just going to keep trying this. Yeah, we're going to keep pushing. And so unfortunately for House Republicans, they had the easy part. The kind of obstacles that Reconciliation 3.0 could face in the Senate is, first, it needs to meet this threshold of having an impact on the budget.
That comes down to the Senate parliamentarian. Second, where are Senate Republicans on all of this in terms of how they support each of these provisions in this legislation? For example, the SAVE Act, that's going to be a big question mark. Some are not in favor of this. And finally, Democrats could force a lot of votes through this process, as we know, a voterama, and Republicans do not look forward to that in any way. So caveating all that, this is what is in the bill, essentially. There is $10 billion marked for admin funding, another $60 billion for military and other related spending, $12 billion for agriculture, and $13 billion for intelligence-related spending. So $95 billion in total is what that bill is.
And essentially what House Speaker Mike Johnson has said and other Republicans is it basically encompasses an emergency supplemental request from the Trump administration, from the Pentagon, for about $70 billion to fund the Iran war.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–1:36
2
What legislative wins did House Republicans push before the August recess?
1:36–4:49
3
How does the reconciliation process (Reconciliation 3.0) work and why does it matter?
4:49–16:21
4
What spending and policy items are included in the $95 billion budget resolution?
16:21–18:22
5
Why are Republicans using reconciliation to fund military operations and the Iran war?
18:22–26:15
6
What is the SAVE (Save America) Act and why is Trump pushing it despite Senate resistance?
26:15–33:59