EXCLUSIVE — Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has two challenges on his mind as he prepares to usher President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda through the Senate.
Thune wants to push the envelope on what gets past the Senate parliamentarian, who weighs whether legislation is subject to the filibuster.
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Yet his job will be as much about managing GOP expectations as maneuvering Senate rules. Every provision must have a budget impact to qualify for reconciliation, the fast-track procedure that allows Republicans to sidestep the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold.
That means Republicans’ loftier policy goals could be blocked despite having unified control of Washington.
Thune told the Washington Examiner in a Monday interview that Republicans would “take a run” at expanding those limits, viewing the aggressive approach Democrats took on the Inflation Reduction Act as a template.
But he has been cautioning his colleagues in the House and Senate not to get their hopes up too high as they get ready to renew Trump’s 2017 tax cuts alongside more aspirational legislation on the border, energy, national security, and more.
“The Democrats significantly expanded the scope of it but also ran into resistance on some things they were trying to do that had been on their policy agenda list for a long time,” Thune said in his Senate office, three days after he was sworn in as majority leader.
“So, it’s how effective you are making the arguments, how persuasive you are,” he added. “And we will take a look. I mean, we got some things on that list.”
It will be up to Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to determine whether the provisions in their reconciliation bills can pass at a simple majority threshold, in this case 50 votes due to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s ability to break ties.
She must use the Byrd Rule, which limits reconciliation bills to tax, spending, and debt ceiling legislation.
Republicans can get creative, as they did in 2017 with their tax law. Reconciliation bills must be deficit-neutral outside a 10-year budget window, so they allowed pieces of the legislation to expire in 2025.
But some of what is permissible will simply come down to whether Republicans get a favorable interpretation of the rules from MacDonough.
“There’s certainly some subjectivity associated with that, but we want to do everything we can to make the argument for why what we’re trying to do fits within the contours of what the law allows and the Byrd Rule allows for reconciliation,” Thune said.
“We’ll make those arguments to her, and we expect her to be a fair arbitrator,” he added.
Thune sees regulatory reform as one area in which Republicans can push the boundaries. Among other things, Republicans hope to ease rules on energy permitting.
Meanwhile, the most prominent debate is what can be done on the border through reconciliation.
Republicans are unlikely to be allowed to tighten asylum laws or reimplement “Remain in Mexico,” a Trump-era policy that many want codified in statute. But they could conceivably put together legislation that funds a border wall and new Border Patrol agents.
In the House, the chief concern is Republicans’ razor-thin majority. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has been holding strategy sessions with Thune this week, will at times have a one-seat margin.
MacDonough has stymied both parties since taking over as parliamentarian in 2012. In 2021, she repeatedly blocked Democrats from passing a minimum wage hike and legislation protecting Dreamers, among other provisions, through reconciliation.
But Republicans are operating under the perception that MacDonough allowed Democrats to crack the door open wider than it had ever been. They were able to get consequential policies, such as their drug pricing reforms, into what eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act.
This week, Thune rejected the idea of overruling the parliamentarian, something Republicans can do with a simple majority should they disagree with her judgment. Republicans will hold 53 seats next week after Sen.-elect Jim Justice (R-WV) finishes his term as West Virginia governor.
Overruling the parliamentarian is not entirely without precedent, but Thune considers that step a backdoor way to weaken the filibuster, which he committed to protect in his inaugural speech as majority leader.
Instead, he is charting a path that stretches but does not break Senate norms.
Not all Republicans see overruling the parliamentarian as necessarily out of bounds. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), a Trump ally, says he wants to see how MacDonough applies the Byrd Rule to their reconciliation legislation.
“I think a level of consistency will be really important,” Schmitt said. “I’m not taking anything off the table.”
The challenge for Thune will be convincing his conference that Republicans got everything they could through the reconciliation process.
“There are a ton of things that we would love to be able to do, and I get good ideas every day,” Thune said with a smirk.
Thune noted that most Republicans in Congress today were not around eight years ago, when taxes were first passed in 2017.
Back then, the parliamentarian flagged even seemingly benign provisions as violating the Byrd Rule, including the title of the bill, following an objection from Democrats.
“There are a lot of folks here who haven’t been through this before,” Thune said. “We have new members in the Senate, a lot of new ones in the House.”
The same expectation-setting applies to Trump, who is known for rejecting institutional norms if it helps clear the way for GOP priorities. Trump advocated eliminating the filibuster during his first term.
Thune expects there is some room to pass legislation outside of the reconciliation process. He cited bipartisan talks on artificial intelligence last Congress as one area in which Democrats may find common ground.
Bipartisanship will be necessary for must-pass legislation including the farm bill and government funding as well.
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But overall, Thune views reconciliation as the catch-all for everything else, telling the Washington Examiner it is a chance to clear the decks on GOP priorities that have languished for years.
“As we think through those possibilities, obviously it’s with an eye toward: Are there things here that we can do that are consequential and that we’ve been trying to get done for a while?” Thune said.
