The Senate isn’t known for moving quickly, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is hoping to defy that reputation. His goal is to pass his chamber’s version of the GOP megabill with enough time to have it on President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4. The looming task for the GOP caucus leader will test how much power the Senate still maintains in the age of Trump.
Since becoming majority leader on Jan. 3, Thune has had to juggle numerous competing interests.
Since becoming majority leader on Jan. 3, Thune has had to juggle numerous competing interests. He’s had to negotiate strategy with his House counterpart, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the two haven’t always seen eye to eye. He’s had to keep his own caucus in line enough to get even Trump’s least qualified Cabinet nominees confirmed. And he’s had to placate the White House, not to mention the Department of Government Efficiency, even as the executive branch has tried to strip power from the legislature.
So far Thune has rolled with the punches. There were no embarrassing floor defeats for Trump’s appointees, the federal government remains funded through September, and the House and the Senate eventually landed on a budget strategy focused on packing everything into a single bill. The megabill presents its own set of challenges, though, as competing factions within Thune’s caucus hope to reshape the House bill.
On the one side there are the so-called Medicaid moderates who are hoping to reverse many of the House’s changes and cuts to the program. As Politico noted, the group spans ideologies “ranging from conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri to centrist Susan Collins of Maine.” On the other side, you have senators like Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky who think the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” doesn’t cut nearly enough spending. Thune can lose, at most, only three Republican votes before Vice President JD Vance must break a tie, leaving him stuck between a rock and a hard place.
It’s not like Thune is entirely untested in the Senate, though. He’s serving his fourth term, having taken up his seat 20 years ago by unseating Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Moreover, he’s spent the last six years as the GOP caucus whip, effectively serving as former GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s second-in-command and chief vote counter. And as he showed in a well-executed bit of parliamentary maneuvering last month, Thune has clearly developed a sense of the chamber’s intricacies over that time.
But this is the first time Thune has quarterbacked a major bill like this. In a sign of how much is at stake, he’s already enlisted Trump to help get the troops in order. CNN reported Monday that Trump called several of the GOP senators who’ve raised concerns about the House bill, urging them to pass it quickly. Even here, though, it’s not self-evident that Trump managed to put out any potential fires, as Hawley posted on X that the president agreed that Medicaid benefits should remain untouched.
Thune will need to get his fellow senators to hustle hard to get things wrapped up in just four short weeks.
Whether that’s the case or not won’t be certain until the text of the Senate’s version is made available. Committee chairs are rolling out their legislative text this week and next, going in essentially reverse order of controversy. The Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over both Medicaid and the tax cuts package central to the bill, will likely go last. And then the whole thing must pass the Senate parliamentarian’s skeptical review to ensure it aligns with the chamber’s budget rules. (Thune said again Monday that he wouldn’t overrule the parliamentarian’s judgments if she demands that certain items be removed.)
Which brings us to the biggest issue Thune’s timeline: Whatever changes get made in the Senate will need to be co-signed by the House before reaching Trump’s desk. “It’ll have to track very closely to the House bill, because they’ve got a fragile majority and struck a very delicate balance,” Thune said Monday. That’s something of an understatement, as the version the House sent over only barely passed over the grumbling of conservatives who wanted even harsher spending cuts. Those mutters will likely only grow louder now that MAGA darling billionaire Elon Musk has come out against the bill, describing it as an “outrageous, pork-filled … disgusting abomination.”
Both the House and the Senate are on razor’s edge margins with little cushion as far as timing, given the provision to raise the debt ceiling tucked within that needs to pass by mid-July. Thune will need to get his fellow senators to hustle hard to get things wrapped up in just four short weeks. (And given the Senate’s habit of skipping work on Friday, I do mean short.) It leaves a lot riding on whether the South Dakotan can manage to keep everyone happy and moving quickly in a chamber where even the most genial of colleagues don’t take kindly to be bossed around.
