House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) are “on completely different planets” as they try to push President Donald Trump’s agenda, Laura Weiss and Andrew Desiderio wrote for Punchbowl News on Friday.
Johnson muscled a $95 billion budget reconciliation bill through the House Budget Committee this week, aiming to fund the Pentagon, farm aid, and pieces of the SAVE America Act, Punchbowl reported.
Vice President JD Vance is fully behind the push but Thune has publicly trashed the chances of it surviving his chamber and warning of “significant political and procedural risks,” according to the report.
The rift got personal fast, according to the report.
After Johnson claimed the Senate would pass the House’s budget blueprint before the August recess, Thune shot back that it was “news to me.”
When pressed on whether Johnson even understood the Senate’s objections, Thune insisted the two had talked it through — even as he kept blasting the plan as a “risky proposition” and “an uneven path,” openly questioning whether the “juice is worth the squeeze.”
“Thune’s allies feel like Johnson is constantly offloading problems onto the South Dakota Republican, ultimately forcing him to be the bad guy letting down the MAGA base,” Punchbowl reported. “This has been the case especially with the SAVE America Act, over which Johnson has also been facing immense internal strife.“
With midterms barely four months out, some Senate Republicans are grumbling the whole reconciliation push ignores the affordability crisis actually driving voters.
Trump has repeatedly demanded the SAVE America Act’s passage be given total priority, convinced it’s existential to the Republican Party’s survival.
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