(TNND) — Republicans have unveiled their blueprint for a second reconciliation bill, a sequel to last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which they say will tackle housing, health care and energy costs to make life more affordable for Americans.
The plan announced by the Republican Study Committee is a step towards cementing President Donald Trump’s policies into law while the GOP controls both chambers of Congress.
History suggests Democrats will recapture the tightly contested House from Republicans this year. The sitting president’s party has lost seats in the House in eight of 10 midterm elections going back 40 years.
“Our party has 12 months of guaranteed majorities in Washington. Maybe less. The question isn’t whether we should be ambitious during this narrow window. It’s whether we’ll seize this opportunity to advance the policy solutions American families desperately need,” RSC Chairman August Pfluger, a congressman from Texas, wrote in an op-ed about the “Making the American Dream Affordable Again” reconciliation framework.
The RSC said nearly 190 of its members, spanning every House committee, helped mold the framework.
They said a Republican-only bill is needed, blaming Democrats for a failure to work across the aisle.
Reconciliation is a process that allows the Senate to pass tax- and budget-related legislation through a simple majority vote, as opposed to the usual 60-vote threshold.
The Senate parliamentarian is charged with reviewing reconciliation bills to make sure they adhere to the so-called Byrd rule, ensuring the provisions are fiscally focused.
The RSC said it has built an artificial intelligence tool trained on thousands of Byrd rule documents to generate compliant legislative text and preempt Democratic challenges.
Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said the soonest a first-draft bill is likely to arrive out of this framework is a month or two from now. And that’s likely to be in the House before the Senate.
Republicans in the House will only have a three- to five-seat cushion to pass a bill, depending on when some vacancies will be filled over the coming months. So, House Speaker Mike Johnson would only be able to afford two or three defectors.
Democrats are likely to be united against any bill, loath to give Republicans any sort of victory with the midterm elections coming in November.
But full unity won’t be easy for Republicans in the House, not to mention some GOP priorities in the House might be at odds with those in the Senate.
Jones said congressional backers of this effort will need full buy-in from Trump, working the phones and pressuring Republicans on the fence to get on board.
He said there’s sure to be strong pushback from lobbyists over parts of the plan.
For example, the blueprint calls for the elimination of the capital gains tax on the sale of homes to first-time homebuyers.
That’s meant to lower the threshold for young families to buy a home, a key part of the American dream.
But Jones said that would also effectively create a dual market, incentivizing the selling of homes to one group of buyers over another.
And that one change would reduce federal revenues by about $126 billion, according to the RSC plan.
Jones said some of the provisions could draw the ire of budget hawks in the GOP, although the RSC said the plan overall would achieve over $1 trillion in net deficit reductions.
The affordability focus is right for Republicans, Jones said. That’s sure to be the top issue for voters this fall.
But Jones said he gives a second reconciliation bill less than a 50-50 shot at passing before the midterms.
And even if it does, and even if its provisions work as advertised by Republicans, many won’t kick in soon enough to sway voter sentiment this November, Jones said.
“The Republican Study Committee members’ thinking is that this is probably their last, best chance to get any legislation passed during Donald Trump’s tenure as president,” Jones said.
Jones said the health care proposals will be especially tricky for Republicans to reach consensus, with members in competitive districts wary of any change that could be perceived as undercutting access among key swing voters.
The RSC said the plan would redirect existing Affordable Care Act subsidies away from insurers and into patients’ hands through Health Freedom Accounts, while eliminating regulatory barriers preventing affordable generic drugs from reaching the market.
Among the housing affordability measures included in the plan is mortgage portability, allowing homeowners to keep their existing mortgage rate when purchasing a new home or enabling new homeowners to assume the previous owner’s mortgage.
It also addresses what the GOP calls a “marriage penalty,” ending the requirement that both parents work in order to be eligible for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. They said that change would support stay-at-home parents.
And the RSC said the plan would lower energy costs by codifying Trump’s deregulatory executive orders.
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