GOP risks ‘big, beautiful bill’ divisions with second reconciliation push

Congressional Republicans are revisiting the same intraparty tensions that turned passage of last year’s “big, beautiful bill” into a drawn-out and politically damaging saga.

Republicans in the House and Senate have begun discussing what might get included in another attempt at reconciliation, the party-line budget process they used to pass President Donald Trump’s tax law. At the top of the list is money for the war in Iran and immigration enforcement. Republicans are also contemplating ways to pass a watered-down version of the SAVE America Act, their flagship election bill.

They are moving ahead despite a heavy dose of skepticism that a GOP-only bill, even a relatively narrow one, can get through the House, where Republicans have a threadbare, one-vote majority — and despite the infighting they endured last summer, when months of disagreement over Medicaid reform threatened to derail the first reconciliation bill.

Senate Republicans nonetheless see reconciliation as an