House GOP floats reconciliation 4.0 amid disappointment at 3.0 plan

House Republican leaders are already starting to float reconciliation 4.0 — even with a third party-line budget bill barely out of the gate and facing an uncertain future.

The idea for a fourth bill that utilizes the special process that enables budget-related legislation to get through Congress with only Republican votes comes as many House Republicans are disappointed with the reconciliation 3.0 framework being significantly downsized from the “anti-fraud” spending reductions and defense boost that many Republicans had envisioned.

Instead, GOP leaders unveiled the latest $95 billion framework as a means to quickly address the Pentagon’s need to replenish munitions amid the war in Iran, provide critical farm aid, and try to answer President Trump’s call for voter ID and proof-of-citizenship voting restrictions in the vein of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act through a new grant program for states. The bill includes no spending reductions or cuts to offset the $95 billion, peeving budget hawks. 

GOP leaders have briefly floated to members the possibility of a fourth reconciliation package before that could include the kind of big budget reduction measures that Republicans had been hoping for.

“No one thought we could get to reconciliation 3.0, and we think we’re going to get through it. And then all of a sudden, now we’re talking about reconciliation 4.0,” House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) said at the Hill Nation Summit on Wednesday.

“I’m just giving you a little teaser on that,” McClain said, “because we do have to deal with the waste, the fraud, the abuse, the offsets, the afford— all of that stuff.”

Opening that up now,........

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