WASHINGTON—After Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act five months ago, advancing President Donald Trump’s policy agenda through budget reconciliation, GOP lawmakers are pushing for a second such package.

Like the first reconciliation bill, it could allow Republicans to sidestep the Senate filibuster. Yet it, too, would face narrow Republican margins in Congress.

Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), told The Epoch Times on Nov. 19 that “reconciliation 2.0 is something that we’re working on.”

“We believe that affordability needs to be the key priority here, especially dealing with health care and housing,” said Pfluger, who has led an RSC working group on a second such package.

During a Nov. 20 Senate floor speech, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked: “Why have we sat around for five months and not started on the second reconciliation bill?”

“If we do not take advantage of this opportunity to lower the cost of living for the American people through reconciliation, when we only need 51 votes to do it, it’s legislative malpractice.”

Earlier in November, Politico reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he was meeting with Republicans about the contours of a second bill.

Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, would play a key role in steering any policy proposals through budget reconciliation.

Momentum has picked up after months of relative quiet on the issue.

On Oct. 21, several months after the passage of the reconciliation mega-bill, Trump told Republican senators that he and Congress “don’t need to pass any more bills.”

“We got everything in that bill. There’s nothing else we have to put,” he said of the first reconciliation package during a lunch at the White House Rose Garden.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 15, 2025. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times)

Health Care, Housing, and Affordability

On Nov. 23, he made the case for a second such effort in The Wall Street Journal.

His policy prescriptions include decreasing funding to sanctuary jurisdictions, increasing the portability of mortgages, and unveiling new alternatives to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.

ACA premium tax credits, set to expire at the end of this year, will get a vote in December. The White House has circulated a plan that would see them extended.

Pfluger told The Epoch Times that reconciliation discussions are entirely separate from the ACA tax credit debate.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 19 that Republicans seeking to address health care, affordability, and related issues might have to choose between budget reconciliation and filibuster reform.

Roy said he sent ideas over to the White House in August.

“I think we are optimistic that there are things we can do, but we’ve got to work to build the votes,” he said.

Roy was a longtime holdout during the first reconciliation process earlier this year. By contrast, during the government shutdown, he and others in the House Freedom Caucus generally coordinated with House Republican leadership.

He credited that to “early conversations”—the sort of engagement that could be key to the shape of a possible future reconciliation bill, along with a resolution of the ACA subsidy issue.

“Come tell me you’re going to give me health care reform, then talk to me about what you want to do on the subsidies,” Roy said.

President Donald Trump greets Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) as he leaves after addressing a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, predicted that health care policy would be central to a second reconciliation bill.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s one that comes out in the spring,” he told The Epoch Times.

While some Republican lawmakers have emphasized health care in talk of another reconciliation bill, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) has stressed housing—more specifically, the supply of less costly housing.

“We actually are going to have to cushion the reconciliation package for there to be money that is available for housing,” he said.

Sessions would like to see the Federal Housing Authority’s money incentivize the construction of more affordable homes by private investors.

He contrasted his proposal with those of the RSC on housing, which include the removal of any capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences.

“We have a bigger problem than just money. We have a problem with trying to fit people in houses with children,” Sessions said.