Updated June 3, 2025 at 11:41 AM EDT
The Republican-led U.S. Senate returns from recess today to debate President Trump's "big, beautiful" multi-trillion dollar budget bill.
The plan is key to accomplishing the bulk of Trump's domestic policy agenda, which includes new work requirements for Medicaid recipients, increased spending for immigration enforcement, overhauling the student loan system, and ending tax breaks for clean energy.
Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist with bipartisan public relations agency ROKK Solutions and former spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, knows the reconciliation process in the Senate. Bonjean told Morning Edition that while he expects some pushback from a handful of Republican senators, he ultimately expects the bill to pass.
He also spoke with NPR's Steve Inskeep about how Trump's presidency is changing the legislative process.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Steve Inskeep: I'm just thinking, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, the conventional wisdom at this point would be that Senate Republicans were a little more broad-minded than House Republicans, by which I mean the House would take an ideological or partisan vote or go for their ideal vote, and then senators would smooth out the edges or just reject their ideas. Is that still the dynamic?
Ron Bonjean: It's still the dynamic usually. But under President Trump, we are under different circumstances. I think that there is much more pressure on these Republicans to act not only because of the fact that it's the president's signature piece of legislation, but that the debt ceiling needs to be raised by August, or else we default. And that's something that's never happened before. So I think that that is an issue.
However, I would say that the pressure from Trump is overwhelming. And we have never seen a bill move this fast. This is one of the largest bills in American history we've ever had to deal with. Never seen a move this fast through the House, and I think it's going to move faster through the Senate despite the Senate concerns.
Inskeep: Oh, that's really interesting, because we are hearing about enough senators objecting to this bill, in theory, to actually reject it. Josh Hawley, Republican, opposed the proposed cuts to Medicaid. He said if Republicans are going to be a party of the working class, they need to support the working class. Rand Paul, another Republican, is saying can't deal with raising the debt ceiling and adding so much debt, is it really going to be that difficult to…
Bonjean: I'd say, on deficit reductions and spending cuts, that's something that the House Freedom Caucus objected to because that is such a cerebral argument and one that does affect Americans in the long term. It doesn't affect their immediate issues in the near term. And that's why I think that the argument over Medicaid is really going to be more of the sticking point where you have Senators Susan Collins and Josh Hawley and Thom Tillis all expressing concerns. Yes, I see the bill slowing down, but I see it eventually passing once they can figure this out.
Inskeep: Can I ask about some of that — I was about to say details. But of course, these could be tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. They want to get rid of tax breaks for clean energy, for example. And I'm thinking about the way that those tax breaks had been distributed in a way that benefit, in some cases, red states. You have batteries being made in red states, you have Elon Musk's car company. There are different ways that people who were on the right benefited. Are provisions like that perhaps likely to go back into law?
Bonjean: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And also on the Medicaid cuts, there are a lot of constituents in red states that could be affected by those, too. It's really difficult to say because, if you're going to put, you know, $550 billion, or some of that of clean energy tax credits back in, you're going to have House Republicans have a real problem with that.
Right now, we've got four Senate Republicans that really publicly pose a total repeal of the credits: Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis, John Curtis and Jerry Moran. So it's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Inskeep: Yeah, and four, we should note, is enough since you've got 53 Republicans, four is enough to sink something. Can I ask what you think happened to higher taxes on the rich, given that the president is said to be driving this, it's said to be his agenda. And he said he liked the idea of raising some taxes on the rich. And the House bill didn't include that.
Bonjean: Yeah, I didn't see that as a possibility. I just don't see [Republicans] raising the rates on the wealthy. That was something that Trump did propose and he proposed a new bracket too, and those making $2.5 million or over, I think that's who he considers really rich would then be hit with a tax cut, but that didn't really fly in the House and I think it falls countercurrent to what Republicans wanted to see.
Inskeep: One other thing, Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa got in some trouble or at least was criticized at a town hall meeting when she was told that Medicaid cuts would cause people to die. And she said, well, people are going to die. She then apologized in a way that wasn't really an apology, saying, obviously people die. She did this in a social media post from a cemetery. Is this helpful to Republicans?
Bonjean: I mean, it is factually true. We are all going to die.
Inskeep: Fact check: True! Go on.
Bonjean: Right. I don't know if that was the most artful answer given, you know, in a situation like this. But, you know, man, it's hard to explain an answer like that.
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