Up next: DOGE cuts and a shutdown cliff

Politico

2 days ago

IN TODAY'S EDITION:— GOP turns to rescissions, funding fights— Johnson wants two more reconciliation bills— Defense policy bill to shake up Pentagon
Republicans finally got their 'big, beautiful bill' across the finish line. Now they're turning to their next urgent tasks: codifying billions in spending cuts and avoiding a government shutdown.
The Senate plans to vote no earlier than next week on President Donald Trump's request for lawmakers to scrap $9.4 billion in previously-approved funding for NPR, PBS and foreign aid, two people tell our Jordain Carney. That's running dangerously close to lawmakers' July 18 deadline to vote in favor of the rescissions package, or the administration will be forced to spend the money as Congress originally intended.
GOP leaders have work to do to shore up votes for the package, which would formalize funding cuts previously sought by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency initiative. Among the wary Republicans is top Senate Appropriator Susan Collins, who helped tank Trump's unsuccessful rescissions request back in 2018. The Maine Republican said during a late-June hearing with White House budget chief Russ Vought that reducing support for the AIDS-fighting program PEPFAR would be 'extraordinarily ill-advised and short-sighted;' Collins later told Calen that she's looking at 'drafting an alternative package of rescissions.' Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan and Mike Rounds have also echoed Collins' warnings about slashing money for public broadcasting, with Sullivan saying he's seeking an amendment for 'very rural' stations that would be affected by the White House proposal.
Looming over the rescissions talks: appropriations. Senators will Thursday begin marking up their first batch of spending bills necessary to fund the government beyond the end of the current fiscal year on September 30. Leaders are under immense pressure to allow votes on individual measures rather than seek to avert a shutdown with a massive omnibus, and more than anything else want to avoid having to pass another short-term stopgap. But the scheduled August recess will take away four weeks of time lawmakers would otherwise be in Washington to negotiate.
The House has made some progress with its appropriations work, passing one bill so far and advancing four others out of committee. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole says he wants to complete all 12 markups by July 30. Yet even the typically-bipartisan bill to fund the Department of Veterans' Affairs only garnered two Democratic votes on the chamber floor. It underscores how a process that once relied on buy-in between the two parties has become a largely partisan exercise — a risky situation for Republicans who can only lose three votes on their side of the aisle for party-line legislation.
We'll also be watching how lawmakers respond to the deadly flooding in central Texas over the weekend, including whether they'll back up some Texas state officials who are sharply criticizing the National Weather Service for severely underestimating the rainfall in its forecasts. The White House on Sunday pushed back against attempts to link the administration's NWS staffing cuts to its inability to warn Texas residents about the storms.
At least two members have been directly affected by the catastrophe, our Gregory Svirnovskiy reports: Texas Rep. August Pfluger and Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter. Pfluger's daughter and Carter's granddaughters were rescued from a camp affected by the flooding, with Carter also sharing that his granddaughters' cousin was killed.
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WHAT WE'RE WATCHINGWith help from Jordan Williams
The House will have a pro forma session at 10 a.m. The Senate will have a pro forma session at 10:15 a.m.
— Senate Armed Services will have a subcommittee meeting to mark up provisions of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 at 5:30 p.m.
The rest of the week: The Senate will convene Tuesday to vote to end debate on Preston Griffith's nomination to be under secretary of Energy at 5:30 p.m. The Senate will move forward with confirming other Trump nominees and marking up government funding bills for fiscal 2026.
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THE LEADERSHIP SUITE
Johnson outlines next reconciliation plans
Speaker Mike Johnson, riding high on a legislative win, is already sketching out the timeline for passing as many as two other partisan packages through the filibuster-skirting, budget reconciliation process.
'We've been planning a second reconciliation bill for the fall attached to the next fiscal year, and then potentially one in the spring,' Johnson said on Fox News Sunday. 'That's my plan. Three reconciliation bills before this Congress is over. I think we can do that.'
The speaker didn't elaborate on what specific policy areas would be addressed in these future packages. But look out for any priorities of key hardliners, with Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy hinting last week they got assurances from Johnson and the White House that certain items on their wish list would be addressed at a later date in exchange for supporting the megabill.
For instance, some House conservatives said the White House committed to further scaling back clean-energy tax credits created by the Democrats' 2022 climate law, our Kelsey Tamborrino and Josh Siegel write. Our Meredith Lee Hill reports that Roy specifically said he talked to Trump administration lawyers for about six hours last week on this very topic.
Johnson, however, denied there were any 'side deals' with members to get them to vote for the megabill before the July 4 deadline.
POLICY RUNDOWN
NDAA TO SHAKE UP PENTAGON — House Armed Services is looking to make it more difficult to withdraw troops from Europe and change how the Pentagon buys its weapons, according to draft text of the annual defense policy bill obtained by our Connor O'Brien in advance of the panel's planned July 15 markup. House members are also not currently considering an increase in funding after military operations got a $150 billion boost in the GOP megabill.
Senate Armed Services, meanwhile, will mark up its version of the defense bill this week. Subcommittees will meet today and early Tuesday to approve individual portions of the NDAA, with the full panel slated to debate and vote on the whole package starting Tuesday afternoon and likely stretching out over multiple days. The full committee markup will take place in a closed session and details are not expected to emerge until after senators vote on it.
MEGABILL COULD SLAM THE JOB MARKET — The White House is touting the U.S.' monthly gains in jobs. But that's in danger of fading due to the aggressive immigration policies in the megabill, our Sam Sutton reports.
As Trump's domestic policy agenda chips away at the supply of foreign-born workers, White House officials insist that won't dent the economy because the partisan package will encourage more Americans to enter the workforce. Many economists disagree, predicting the immigration crackdown will hurt the labor market — especially if immigrant workers are unable to offset an aging domestic population.
Capitol Hill's nonpartisan scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office, predicts that population growth is expected to ease in the coming decades. And a separate analysis from CBO predicted that the post-pandemic jump in immigration would positively impact economic output — though with a lower average wage growth — while leaving inflation untouched.
FOOD BANKS PLEA FOR PRIVATE, STATE FUNDING — Food banks across America warn they are unprepared to feed millions of people once the megabill's cuts to safety net programs take effect, our Marcia Brown reports. Republicans defended the cuts as necessary to wipe out waste, fraud and abuse, but the legislation will slash more than $1 trillion from the nation's largest food assistance program and Medicaid, with some of the reductions coming as early as this year.
Some food bank leaders are looking to convince private foundations and state leaders to help make up for the shortfalls — though it likely won't be enough. The cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program alone will eliminate 6-to-9 billion meals annually. That's about the same number of meals the food bank network provided last year; they would likely need to double their operations to close the gap SNAP leaves behind.
TAX BREAKS IN THE MEGABILL — The GOP's party-line package was primarily designed to prevent $4 trillion in looming tax increases set to hit at the end of this year. Senate Republicans, however, also added a crop of unrelated, bespoke tax breaks costing tens of billions of dollars, our Brian Faler reports. A slew of new tax breaks would benefit venture capitalists, Alaskan fisheries, spaceports, private schools, rum makers and more. House GOP lawmakers got in their share, too.
Best of POLITICO Pro and E&E:
CAMPAIGN STOP
MEGABILL'S ELECTION IMPACTS — The GOP's megabill passage kicks off the political promises of 2026 and 2028 for party leaders, our Benjamin Guggenheim reports. Included in the sweeping legislative package are tax cuts and deep safety-net restrictions, all set to expire as Republicans look to hold the majorities in their chambers the next two cycles.
The bill also gives a sneak peak into the campaign promises and the key legislative priorities ahead. The most politically explosive cuts to Medicaid and the SNAP are set to take place in 2028. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders are already taking the offensive on the safety-net issue and Republicans are fretting that it could result in some big electoral losses, our Lisa Kashinsky, Andrew Howard and Elena Schneider report.
Johnson shrugged off concerns over the issue in his Fox interview Sunday, saying that people should not 'buy into those false talking points.'
'Everyone will have more take home pay, they'll have more jobs and opportunity, the economy will be doing better and we'll be able to point to that as the obvious result of what we did,' he said.
ELON'S AMERICA PARTY? — After Musk and Trump's split over the GOP megabill, the billionaire declared the launch of his own political party, the 'America Party,' our Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing reports. Musk is now threatening to drum up support for this new, third party, noting that he would target a handful of vulnerable swing seats in Congress to leverage political power.
'Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,' he wrote on his social media platform, X. Trump, who Musk helped in 2024, later posted on Truth Social that Musk had 'gone off the rails.'
SOUZZI'S MESSAGE FOR DEMS — Rep. Tom Suozzi said Democrats can learn from Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, our Jacob Wendler reports. In an interview on CBS' 'Face The Nation' Sunday morning, Suozzi, a centrist New York Democrat who represents a Trump-won district, said Mamdani tapped into the topic of affordability in the same way that Trump campaigned on the issue in 2024.
'Democrats have got to do a better job learning from Trump and Mamdani not with their solutions, which I think are wrong, but with the diagnosis of the problem that, 'we're frustrated, we're concerned,'' Suozzi said.
He added that voters perceive Democrats as focused on reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ protections rather than 'the issues people think about every night when they are lying in bed,' like immigration, taxes, crime and health care.
THE BEST OF THE REST
Centrist Rep. Don Bacon is done with Congress — but open to a potential presidential bid, from Scott Wong and Frank Thorp V at NBC News
'Tears My Heart to Pieces': North Carolina Braces for Medicaid Cuts, from Eduardo Medina at The New York Times
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Rep. Judy Chu … former House Majority Leader Dick Armey … former Rep. Matt Rosendale … Marti Adams Baker … Bloomberg's Nia-Malika Henderson … Eleanor Clift … Ed Kaleta of UnitedHealth Group … Matt Gobush of the Afghanistan War Commission … Luther Lowe … Truman Reed of Rep. Monica De La Cruz's office … Ana Kasparian … CNN's Sophie Tatum … Patricia Bryan (7-0) … Miranda Dabney … Michael Hudome … Amanda Crumley … Jason Raymond … Bry'Shawna Walker of Rep. Shomari Figures' office
TRIVIA
THURSDAY'S ANSWER: Steve Finley correctly answered that President Dwight Eisenhower changed the name of the presidential mountain retreat Shangri-La to Camp David, after his grandson.
TODAY'S QUESTION, from Steve: Which former U.S. senator was born in Wisconsin; was elected to the Senate as both a Republican and a Democrat; and had a cameo appearance in a Lee Marvin movie?