“I think we all hate vote-a-rama,” Johnson added. “Some people are more sensitive to the kind of votes they have to take.”
In another complication, some Senate defense hawks want more military spending than the $60 billion House Republicans laid out in their own framework. Johnson said he and other Republicans expect to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later Wednesday to discuss the Pentagon’s needs.
But other Senate Republicans, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), aren’t convinced it’s a good idea to pursue another party-line bill at all.
“It used to be we would try to figure out how we worked through some challenging problems with the minority,” she said.
Murkowski added that the Trump administration’s strategy of relying on the reconciliation process to avoid bipartisan negotiations only works if a majority of Republican senators go along with the plan.
“It’s not always guaranteed that you get 50” votes, she said.
Vought, meanwhile, leaned on the potential for yet another party-line reconciliation package to be enacted after the midterm elections as another vehicle to deliver key priorities. That could include a debt limit increase, he said, along with yet another tranche of defense cash to meet Trump’s $1.5 trillion goal for annual military spending.
The various legislative vehicles left some GOP senators scratching their hands as they left the lunch.
Asked if he had gotten clarity from Vought & Co., Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, “‘Not really’ is the short answer.”
