GOP In Disarray

GOP infighting erupts as Thune warns of legislative ‘train wreck’

Internal squabbles erupted in the Senate Republican Conference on Wednesday as GOP senators battled each other and the White House over a variety of issues, prompting Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to warn that his colleagues face a potential legislative “train wreck.”

Senate Budget Committee Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) clashed with Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) over Johnson’s relentless push for a vote on a budget resolution to begin moving a third reconciliation bill before the August recess, according to GOP sources familiar with the meeting.

Collins, who is perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Republican up for reelection this year, told colleagues that diving into a floor debate and vote-a-rama on amendments to a budget resolution would be politically unwise.

The budget reconciliation process would allow Republicans to circumvent a Democratic filibuster, but it would also give Democrats the chance to force votes on an unlimited number of potentially embarrassing amendments.

Johnson warned colleagues Wednesday that as many as 10 or 11 Senate committees could receive reconciliation instructions, which could make a wide array of amendments germane and viable for adoption at a simple-majority threshold, according to a senator who attended the meeting.

“If we vote yes on the motion to proceed” to the budget resolution and “we got on it, we’d have to do vote-a-rama, and that’s what people are worried about,” said a GOP senator, who requested anonymity to discuss pushback from Republican colleagues to trying to pass a budget resolution before the August recess.

The senator said Collins pointed out those potential pitfalls.

“Can you imagine how many amendments that would be?” the senator said, noting Republicans might have to vote on proposals to restrict Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or to permanently ban the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate MAGA allies prosecuted under former President Biden.

Several other GOP senators, in addition to Collins, pushed back hard against Johnson’s proposal to initiate a messy budget reconciliation process before the August recess.

Collins has said for weeks that she would prefer to provide funding for the Pentagon and farmers who are struggling because of low commodity prices through the regular congressional appropriations process.

She declined to comment on the arguments she made to colleagues at Wednesday’s conference meeting.

“I’m not going to discuss what happened at lunch,” she told The Hill.

Johnson, however, said after the contentious lunch meeting that he’s “still working” to advance the budget resolution before the Senate adjourns for the August recess.

Thune confirmed after the lunch meeting that attempting to move another budget resolution would drag “a bunch” of other committees into the process, which would open up the floor to votes on all sorts of controversial issues.

Asked if he would even have the votes to proceed to a budget resolution, Thune replied, “Probably hard to say.”

Thune also must navigate internal Republican disagreements over a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government until Dec. 11 and a bill championed by Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to reform the rules for compensating college athletes.

“It’s kind of a train wreck, isn’t it?” Thune quipped to reporters as he arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday morning.

GOP senators battled with White House legislative staff at Wednesday’s lunch meeting over language the White House added to the CR that would delay the implementation of a ban on hemp-derived THC products such as delta-8 until December.

Republicans in the meeting described the discussion as heated after the White House blindsided GOP lawmakers with the addition.

Some Republican senators want to delay the ban on hemp-derived THC products, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has argued that it unfairly targets Kentucky’s hemp industry.

Paul on Wednesday accused Republican colleagues of exaggerating the potential harm of those popular products.

“These busybodies in there that want to ban everything are jumping up and down. It’s like they watched ‘Reefer Madness’ in 1937 and they believe the whole world’s going to be hooked on marijuana,” Paul told reporters for The Associated Press and “PBS NewsHour” after the meeting.

But other GOP senators are adamant about stripping the White House-backed hemp language from the government funding bill.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) is pressuring GOP leaders to allow a vote on an amendment to the stopgap measure to strip the provision.

“Let me be clear: I will not back down. I will not waver. I will not stop until this life-threatening hemp loophole is closed permanently. We must strip this amendment from the [continuing resolution] & regulate these harmful substances for what they are—not what the industry wants to call them,” Budd posted on the social platform X.

Other Republicans say they don’t want to have another fight over it right before Christmas.

Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) indicated they would support Budd’s amendment.

“I’d rather have the fight now than during the holidays,” Rounds said. “I can’t see why we should include semisynthetic hemp as a part of hemp itself as something that moves forward in the future. Let’s just call it what it is.”

Rounds said he doesn’t understand why the White House is trying to delay the ban on hemp-derived THC products.

“If I don’t know and nobody’s got a good reason for it, let’s take it out of the bill and then let’s get on with the CR,” he added.

Thune also has to referee a Republican-versus-Republican fight over the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan bill drafted by Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to create new regulations for compensating college athletes for the use of their name, image and likeness.

Thune on Wednesday filed a cloture motion to advance the bill, but it faces an objection from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

Hawley warns the legislation could overturn state-enacted bans on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.

“I’m concerned about that,” Hawley said of Thune’s effort to move forward on the college sports bill.

“I filed amendments to the bill. Listen, I’m against men in women’s sports, and Missouri has a law that bans men in women’s sports that applies to collegiate eligibility,” he said.

“My concern is that this [bill] as it’s currently drafted would overturn Missouri law. Twenty-seven states have similar bans. This is something that needs to be fixed,” he added. “We cannot overturn 27 state laws that ban men in women’s sports.

“That’s just unthinkable,” he declared. “Can you imagine a Republican Congress overturning Republican state laws that ban biological men in women’s sports?”

Cruz, however, disputed the criticism that the bill would undermine state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports.

“That’s simply inaccurate. The legislation explicitly has language, number one, that nothing in the bill alters Title IX in any way. And, number two, it explicitly says on eligibility that you can be blocked from eligibility for violating a state law,” Cruz said. “That was written very deliberately to avoid disturbing the 27 states that have acted to protect women’s sports.”

Title IX is the civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program.

Thune said he hopes the fight over the college sports reform bill won’t stop it from passing before the August recess.

“I’m hoping it can be worked out. I know what it’s about and I think … some of our members have pretty good answers to some of the questions he’s raising,” Thune said of Hawley’s objection. “I’m hopeful that we’ll have the bipartisan votes to get on the bill.”

Thune also filed a cloture motion Wednesday to advance the House-passed ban on members of Congress trading stocks.

The legislation includes a provision that would require voters to show photo identification for federal elections.

Some GOP senators want to consider the House-approved stock-trading ban before the recess if they can’t make progress on a budget resolution to pave the way for $10 billion in funding for states to tighten voting rules.

The Stop Insider Trading Act passed the House last month 232-198.

“It’s a vote that a lot of members thought would be a good one to have. We’re just teeing some things up,” he said. “How it all unfolds is still a little bit up in the air.”