President-elect Donald Trump and lawmakers failed Wednesday evening to settle on a legislative approach to advance their party-line agenda, potentially threatening to stymie the energy and border policies they’ve been promoting for months.
Nonetheless, Trump told reporters after the two-hour meeting in the Senate that he doesn’t care how the bill gets passed, as long as lawmakers advance his top priorities like cutting taxes and ramping up energy production.
On energy specifically, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said Trump told senators President Joe Biden’s recent ban on offshore drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. oceans “needs to be addressed.”
Hoeven said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) also pitched the ‘‘Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act” for inclusion in the package.
That bill would require Congress to approve “major rules” issued by executive agencies, effectively stymieing regulation brought by the executive branch — a longtime goal for Republicans and the energy industry.
“Mike Lee brought up the ‘REINS Act,’ and there was strong support and consensus for that,” Hoeven said, adding that Trump agreed with the proposal.
On the budget reconciliation process, which bypasses the Senate filibuster, Trump had previously endorsed “one big, beautiful bill,” in line with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who has worried about getting two bills passed in the narrowly divided House — but has wavered on that position. Senators want to slice the measures in two.
“One bill, two bills, doesn’t matter to me, they’re gonna work that out,” Trump said, flanked by top senators including Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming. “The end result is the same, we’re gonna get something done and it’s gonna be reducing taxes and creating a lot of jobs and all the other things that you know about.”
Republican senators see a benefit to to chalking up an early win on energy and border policies without having to get lawmakers on the same page on a grueling tax debate. The 2017 Trump tax cuts expire at the end of the year.
“He heard from us and our leader that a two-bill strategy is still very much alive over here,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who is in leadership and moderated the event. “It’s something that we’re still very interested in. No decisions were made.”
She added Trump and the senators talked about tariffs, immigration and unleashing American energy.
“As you can imagine with him,” she said, “It was pretty broad-ranging.”
‘Horse race’ between Senate and House?
Hoeven, meanwhile, said he pitched Trump on a “horse race” approach between the House and the Senate, where each chamber would work on its own approach and see who ultimately is more successful. Hoeven said Thune and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have also spoken about a similar idea.
“If they’re moving it along at a faster pace and it looks like that’s going to happen, then I guess we would end up going that direction,” Hoeven said. “If they aren’t moving it, and we’ve got the one ready to go and we are moving, then maybe [we do that].”
“Just dual-track it and see what gets us further faster,” Hoeven added.
The meeting — held after Trump paid his respects to the late former President Jimmy Carter, who is lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda — was part of the president-elect’s recent hands-on approach to Congress, where intraparty fighting has become common. The one-bill versus two-bill discussion is expected to continue this weekend when House members travel to Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago.
The procedural question likely has to be decided before leaders determine what kind of energy policies to tuck into the legislation, which must have a clear budget nexus. Ideas have abounded.
Earlier in the evening, Johnson told reporters some procedural questions may be settled by Thursday.
“We’re coordinating both chambers to align them and we’ll make those final decisions, I think, probably by tomorrow,” Johnson said Wednesday.
Both House and Senate Republicans have sought to downplay the procedural debate. But it doesn’t bode well for resolving future issues — like top-line spending figures — between the two chambers.
“By and large, everybody’s got the same goal here,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), “which is to provide some big wins on issues that he ran on.”
He pointed specifically to energy production, saying, “What Joe Biden just did this week — essentially captured $60 trillion worth of revenue for our country by banning offshore drilling — that’s insane. No country in the history of the world has declared war on its own natural resources like this administration. I think you’re going to have a reversal in all that.”
