GOP infighting erupts as Thune warns of legislative ‘trainwreck’

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The Hill's Headlines (PM) - August 05, 2026

The Hill's Headlines (PM) - August 05, 2026

Internal squabbles erupted in the Senate Republican conference 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 re-election 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 also gives 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 able to be adopted 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 are 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 that Collins pointed out those potential pitfalls.

“Can you imagine how many amendments that would be?” the senator said, noting that 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 third budget reconciliation process before the August recess.

Collins has said for weeks that she........

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