WASHINGTON – It’s the calm before the reconciliation storm fully reaches the Senate this week, with Republicans working behind the scenes to try to forge their own agreement on changes to their “one big, beautiful bill.”

And GOP senators will also be working to scrub the House bill for compliance with the Senate’s reconciliation rules to ensure that when they have a deal, they can pass the measure without the risk of a Democratic filibuster.

But even the calm is relative, with the bipartisan stablecoins bill still being the pending legislative business. Senators began filing amendments before the recess, with plenty more expected as the floor debate gets underway in earnest this week.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, in a May 27 fireside chat at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, said she thought senators were nearing an agreement on the next steps in the process.

The Wyoming Republican, an advocate for the digital assets legislation, said supporters of the bill opted to begin with stablecoins, which are tied to the U.S. dollar or another currency, in part because “there are still members of Congress who don’t even know what digital assets are.”

“We thought this would be the place to start. It has been extremely difficult. I had no idea how hard this was going to be,” Lummis said. Part of the challenge, she said, was how infrequently committees such as the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs panel advance legislation.

“We’ve lost the mental muscle memory to do it, but we’re trying to slowly recreate it, get the stablecoin bill passed and then move to market structure,” Lummis said.

Before the Senate went on recess, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., filed cloture on four more of President Donald Trump’s executive branch nominees. But Trump announced on social media Saturday that he was withdrawing Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA administrator after “a thorough review of prior associations.”

“I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space,” the president said.

The Senate is expected to kick off the week with the vote to limit debate on the nomination of Michael Duffey to be undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment. Thune has also filed cloture on Allison Hooker’s nomination to be undersecretary of State for political affairs and that of Dale Marks to be an assistant secretary of Defense.

House work

With the reconciliation bill now off to the other side of the Capitol, House Republican leaders are pushing the Senate to largely maintain the House work product.

“I’ve encouraged them to do as little reworking as possible because we have a very delicate balance we’ve maintained in the House, and in the Senate, we both have small majorities,” Speaker Mike Johnson said last week on the Fox News Channel.

The Louisiana Republican was asked to respond to a critique from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has said the bill does not reduce the budget deficit.

“I don’t disagree with my good friend Ron Johnson. He’s right. We have a big national debt problem,” the speaker said. “But I think what’s being discounted here is the fact that we are achieving the largest amount of savings in the history of government on planet Earth.”

Meanwhile, House lawmakers are moving on to other business this week. The chamber is scheduled to take up a bill that would reauthorize opioid addiction treatment and prevention programs. The measure came out of the Energy and Commerce Committee at the end of April.

Several measures reported out of the Small Business Committee are expected to see floor action this week, including one that would direct Small Business Administration officials to move offices out of so-called sanctuary cities, or areas that generally limit local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

The House’s floor schedule for the week also includes a bill, originally introduced by the late Rep. Gerald E. Connolly and now named in the Virginia Democrat’s honor, that would direct the Government Accountability Office to study esophageal cancer. He died May 21, weeks after announcing that his esophageal cancer had returned. He was 75.

At an Oversight and Government Reform Committee markup just before the recess, Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said, “This was the very last piece of legislation that he and I talked about.” Comer co-sponsored the bill with Connolly, who had been the panel’s ranking member,

House Democrats are gearing up for an internal election – reportedly on June 24 – to fill Connolly’s ranking spot, with Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, who has been serving as the acting ranking member, among the declared candidates.

“I have waited in unemployment lines and stood on picket lines, and I understand that working people across this Country are relying on us now more than ever. For the sake of their ability to make a decent living and ensure the health and safety of their families, we must make use of every investigative and legislative tool at our disposal to safeguard the basic freedoms and shared ideals that the Trump Administration is dead set on eroding,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote in a May 29 “Dear Colleague” letter.

Also in the running for the Democratic top slot are Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland and Robert Garcia of California. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett has also said she intends to seek the post.

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—John T. Bennett and Nina Heller contributed to this report.

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