The “one big, beautiful bill” may not be so singular, after all.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is teasing follow-up legislation to the megabill of President Trump’s tax cut and spending priorities that Republicans can push though using the same special budget reconciliation process that requires only GOP votes.
That tool can be used once per fiscal year, with the current fiscal year ending on Sept. 30. So after Republicans are done with the “big, beautiful bill,” the GOP trifecta has, in theory, two more shots to muscle through party-line legislation before the next Congress comes into power after the midterms.
Johnson floated plans for a second reconciliation bill while rebutting concerns from deficit hawks on the budget impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which includes an extension of tax cuts and boosts to border and defense funding, with costs offset in part by new requirements on low-income assistance programs like Medicaid and food aid.
“Everyone here wants to reduce spending,” Johnson said Friday morning on CNBC. “But you have to do that in a sequence of events. We have a plan, OK? This is the first of a multistep process.”
“We’re going to have another reconciliation bill that follows this one, possibly a third one before this Congress is up, because you can have a reconciliation bill for each budget year, each fiscal year. So that’s ahead of us,” Johnson continued, also pointing to separate plans to claw back money based on recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “We’re also doing rescissions packages. We got the first one delivered this week from the White House, and that will codify many of the DOGE cuts.”
The promise of another reconciliation bill is somewhat surprising given the crux of the debate that dominated the early weeks of the year: Should Republicans divide up their agenda into two bills, passing the first quickly to give Trump an early win on boosting funding for border enforcement and deportations? Or would putting all of Trump’s priorities into one bill — which would contain both bitter pills and sweeteners for different factions of the razor-thin majority — be a better political strategy?
Trump eventually said he preferred “one big, beautiful bill,” a moniker that became the legislation’s official title in the House last month.
It’s not clear what would be in a second piece of legislation.
Multiple House Republicans who spoke with The Hill were unaware of plans for more reconciliation bills and were not sure what could be included in them.
“I think we need to see what’s left on the table after the first one,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said.
And to muster through multiple reconciliation bills is a delicate prospect. If members know more reconciliation bills are coming, that complicates the argument that everything in the current package — even policies some factions dislike that others love — need to stay in one megabill.
The Speaker declined to elaborate on what might be in such a package when asked in a press conference last week.
“I’m not going to tell you that,” Johnson said. “Let’s get the first one done.”
“Look, I say this is the beginning of a process, and what you’re going to see is a continuing of us identifying waste, fraud, abuse in government, which is our pledge of common sense, restoring common sense and fiscal sanity. So we have lots of ideas of things that might be in that package.”
Republicans had started planning for the current legislative behemoth months before the 2024 election so they would be prepared to quickly execute on their policy wish list if they won the majority.
“This isn’t something we just drew up overnight. So, we’ll go through that same laborious process,” Johnson said.
But some members have ideas of what else they’d like to see.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said that he’d hope a second bill would do more to tackle rolling back green energy tax credits and make further spending cuts.
Ultimately, though, it will be Trump’s call, Norman said: “I know when the president gets involved, it adds a lot of value.”
And Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) speculated that passing the “big, beautiful bill” would inspire members to keep going with another bill.
“People like the feeling of winning,” Pfluger said.
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