With midterm elections looming and polling numbers flashing warning signs, Republicans are starting to look nervous — and it shows. After spending months touting the sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the cure-all for the economy, GOP lawmakers are now floating yet another partisan package, this time laser-focused on “affordability.” The shift feels less like a bold new vision and more like damage control.
President Trump has made clear he doesn’t see the need for another sweeping bill. Just last week, he brushed off calls for a follow-up package, arguing that Republicans already delivered what voters wanted.
Trump said Republicans “don’t need” another big package to move through Capitol Hill “because we got everything” in the major tax cut and spending legislation passed earlier this year.
Still, anxiety is creeping in. Inside the party, some lawmakers admit the megabill never landed with voters the way leadership hoped. Outside pressure is building too, especially as Democrats sharpen their attacks on health care costs and warn about expiring ObamaCare subsidies. If those subsidies vanish and Republicans offer no clear alternative, the messaging battlefield could tilt quickly.
That fear burst into the open on the Senate floor this week in a moment that was equal parts theatrical and revealing. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana didn’t bother hiding his desperation.
“Pretty please, with sugar on top. I’ll add a cherry. I even got an old McDonald’s McRib coupon. I’ll throw that in, too,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor, his voice rising. “Please bring another reconciliation bill! Please!”
The pitch: use budget reconciliation — the fast-track process that lets legislation pass the Senate with a simple majority — to push through another GOP-only bill without Democratic votes. On paper, Republicans may have one or two more shots at reconciliation. In reality, pulling it off again could be brutal.
Speaker Mike Johnson once floated the idea of two more reconciliation bills, one in fall 2025 and another in 2026. That plan quietly fizzled as Congress got swallowed by a government shutdown fight. Now leadership is talking more cautiously.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise admitted the obvious: nothing else is going to rival what they already passed.
“There are other items we’d like to do, but we got to get consensus,” Scalise said. “As you saw with that bill, it took months to put together, because even with energy production, keeping tax rates low for families, all the things that were so important in that bill, it was hard to pass.”
Hard is an understatement. The House GOP’s razor-thin three-seat majority turned every vote into a high-wire act. Conservative rebels repeatedly stalled progress, demanding deeper spending cuts. In the Senate, leaders sparred with the parliamentarian over what rules would allow, while negotiating with holdouts through an overnight marathon just to get the bill across the finish line.
All of that chaos came despite years of preparation. Republicans had been sketching out reconciliation plans more than six months before the 2024 election, confident they’d have unified control of Washington. Even with that head start, the process nearly collapsed.
Yet walking away empty-handed before the midterms isn’t an option Republicans seem willing to accept. Another party-line bill could give them something — anything — to point to on the campaign trail, or help lock in GOP policies before voters get another say.
The problem is that no one agrees on what this next bill should actually include. Senate rules mean reconciliation can only touch spending and revenue, boxing lawmakers in. Health care, though, keeps rising to the top of the list.
Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, who chairs the House Budget Committee, wants a do-over — this time centered squarely on health care.
“I would like to see another reconciliation bill do what we did with the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ we just do it around health care,” Arrington said.
He didn’t mince words about his target.
“We have the tool in the toolbox to make another unilateral Republican run at reforms that we believe will bring the cost of care down, fix the ‘Unaffordable Care Act,’” Arrington said.
Arrington argued Republicans should push harder on private insurance markets, which he noted dwarf ObamaCare in size, and focus on actually lowering costs — not just reshuffling coverage options.
“We have several ways to do that, make private health insurance more competitive, and provide more affordable options from that market — which is far greater than, you know, 10 times greater than the ObamaCare market — and then do things to not just create more insurance products, but actually do things to pull the cost of health care down.”
Other Republicans echo that theme. Rep. August Pfluger of Texas has floated expanding health savings accounts and related policies through reconciliation. GOP leaders are also pushing a separate health care package this week, including reforms to pharmacy benefit managers and cost-sharing reductions — items that couldn’t survive the Senate’s reconciliation rules last time.
Even so, not everyone is convinced another bill will magically fix the party’s messaging problem. Some Republicans openly admit the sudden focus on affordability feels reactive.
“We’re all just kind of jerking around it with how the polling looks,” Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said bluntly. “Affordability is the new buzz word, and it should be on our concentration all the time.”
That may be the most honest line of all. After betting big on one sweeping bill, Republicans now find themselves scrambling to prove they’re still listening — and still capable of delivering — before voters render their verdict. Whether another partisan package helps or just underscores the panic is a question they’ll have to answer soon.
