As the midterm elections draw near, some Republicans are contemplating a new legislative initiative to bolster their party’s standing. However, President Trump and GOP leaders have made it clear that no forthcoming legislation will match the scale of the expansive One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Last week, President Trump emphasized that Republicans do not require another substantial legislative push through Capitol Hill, asserting that the major tax cuts and spending measures enacted earlier this year have already achieved their goals.

Despite this stance, there are growing calls from both inside and outside Congress for the GOP to focus on affordability issues. Some Republicans believe the party has not effectively communicated the benefits of the previous legislation to the public. Additionally, there is concern that Democrats could gain an advantage with their health care affordability messaging, especially if ObamaCare subsidies expire and the GOP fails to propose a viable alternative.

On Thursday, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana urged for another reconciliation bill to address these affordability challenges. He suggested including tax and regulatory reforms or Republican-backed health care initiatives aimed at increasing Americans’ incomes.

“Pretty please, with sugar on top. I’ll add a cherry. I even have an old McDonald’s McRib coupon. I’ll throw that in, too,” Kennedy exclaimed passionately on the Senate floor. “Please bring another reconciliation bill! Please!”

There is a general desire among Republicans to pursue another bill through the special reconciliation process, which bypasses the 60-vote threshold in the Senate and removes the need to secure Democratic buy-in. But while Republicans could get one or two more cracks at using that process in theory, seeing it come to fruition could be a heavy lift. 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had initially said that he would like to pursue two more reconciliation bills — one in the fall of 2025, and one in 2026. But the fall came and went as Congress became consumed with the government shutdown fight.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said while there is talk of getting a Republican coalition to back another budget reconciliation bill, “nothing’s going to be as monumental as the ‘one big, beautiful bill.’”

“There are other items we’d like to do, but we got to get consensus,” Scalise said. “As you saw with that bill, it took months to put together, because even with energy production, keeping tax rates low for families, all the things that were so important in that bill, it was hard to pass.”

Republicans faced numerous hurdles in advancing the megabill earlier this year in the House, where the GOP has a three-seat majority and no shortage of rebels who repeatedly held up key votes as they sought to extract spending-reduction concessions.

The Senate wasn’t smooth sailing either, as leaders went back and forth with the chamber’s parliamentarian over whether key provisions were allowed under Senate rules governing reconciliation and fought to strike deals with Republican holdouts during a marathon overnight session.

The bumpy road for that bill came in spite of Republicans long having known what they would want to put in such party-line legislation if they won the House, Senate, and White House. Republicans had started crafting the contours for a reconciliation bill more than six months before the 2024 election. 

Still, Republicans do not want to waste the opportunity to usher through party-line legislation — either as a way to help boost their midterm argument, or to codify GOP policies before a difficult midterm election year.

There is still not broad consensus about what could be included in a second reconciliation package, which is subject to Senate rules that mean it can only include policies that affect spending and revenue. But as expiring ObamaCare subsidies have become a major flash point that Democrats aim to use in the midterm elections, many Republicans hope to use reconciliation to address health care.

Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the chair of the House Budget Committee, which would be integral in advancing another reconciliation bill, said he would like to see another reconciliation bill “do what we did with the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ we just do it around health care.”

“We have the tool in the toolbox to make another unilateral Republican run at reforms that we believe will bring the cost of care down, fix the ‘Unaffordable Care Act,’” Arrington said.

“We have several ways to do that, make private health insurance more competitive, and provide more affordable options from that market — which is far greater than, you know, 10 times greater than the ObamaCare market — and then do things to not just create more insurance products, but actually do things to pull the cost of health care down.”

Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), chair of the Republican Study Committee, has also proposed using another reconciliation bill to address health care issues like expanding health savings accounts, among other policies.

House GOP leadership this week aims to pass a package of health care bills with reforms outside of the ObamaCare subsidies that are supported by a broad swath of Republicans that could provide a preview for what kind of health care items could get support in a potential reconciliation bill. The bill includes reforms to the pharmacy benefit manager industry and cost sharing reductions — a policy that was originally included in the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but was stripped out by the Senate because of rules that prevent matters beyond budget or taxation from being included in reconciliation bills.

But some members are skeptical that one more bill can do much to help the party’s message on affordability.

“We’re all just kind of jerking around it with how the polling looks,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said when asked about the prospect of another reconciliation bill to address affordability concerns. “Affordability is the new buzz word, and it should be on our concentration all the time.”