Reconciliation 3.0 Stalls in the Senate: The House's $95 Billion Iran War, Farm Aid and Voter ID Package Has No Offsets

On 22 July the House adopted a fiscal 2027 budget resolution by 216 votes to 214. It sets up a third party-line reconciliation bill this Congress, worth about $95 billion: $73 billion for the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, mostly for the war with Iran, $12 billion in farm aid and $10 billion for grants to states for voter ID and citizenship checks. It has no offsets.

Two weeks later the Senate version was pulled before a vote, because Republican leaders didn’t have 50 votes.

How reconciliation got here

Reconciliation lets a bill pass the Senate with a simple majority, avoiding the filibuster, as long as it sticks to spending, revenue and the debt limit. Republicans used it in July 2025 for the large tax and spending law, which also raised the debt limit by $5 trillion. They used it again in June 2026 for a narrow second bill, about $70 billion for immigration enforcement, which passed the House 214 to 212.

The third bill was meant to follow the same path. In the House, all Democrats voted no, along with Republicans Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson and Kevin Kiley, who had left the party to sit as an independent.

The Senate problem

Budget Committee chair Ron Johnson released the Senate resolution on 7 August. It was larger: $60 billion for defence, $13 billion for intelligence, $12 billion for farm aid and $20 billion for voter ID, about $105 billion in all, with room in the text for up to $150 billion. It instructed eleven committees and left out Finance, so no tax changes.

Leaders pulled the vote on 7 and 8 August after a call with the President. Some Republicans objected to adding to the deficit without offsets; others wanted health provisions the resolution didn’t include. Johnson said, “We’re not giving up.” Majority Leader John Thune said its fate depended on “what the traffic will bear in September.”

What’s missing

The administration has asked for $350 billion in defence money through reconciliation, on top of the regular budget. Neither resolution comes close. Golden Dome, the missile defence programme that CBO says could cost about $1.2 trillion over 20 years, isn’t a line item in either.

CBO hasn’t scored either resolution. Members’ own estimates of the deficit effect range from Brendan Boyle’s “almost $100 billion” to Massie’s $130 billion.

The deficit backdrop

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the two reconciliation laws already passed add nearly $5 trillion to the debt through 2035. It argues the third bill should cut deficits, by $600 billion to $1.4 trillion, instead of adding to them. And the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling in February took away revenue that had been counted on informally to cover part of the 2025 tax law’s cost.

Why the calendar matters

Reconciliation needs unified control. If Democrats win either chamber in November, a third bill must pass in the lame duck or not at all, and a fourth with the $350 billion defence money would be gone. That gives Republican leaders a reason to try again after the election. It also gives holdouts leverage, since leaders can’t lose more than three Republican votes in the Senate.