Fragile relationship with House GOP has Senate Republicans warning ‘something needs to change’

Senate Republicans are taking stock of their relationship with the House GOP as they gear up for another key test of their unity across chambers. 

Dysfunction, miscommunications and wasted time have dotted the last few months of Republicans’ control of Congress, particularly during the longest government shutdown on record. 

Republicans in the upper chamber aren’t singling out others in the House who should bear responsibility, but they do agree that something needs to change as they plow forward to fund immigration operations for the next few years. 

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“I think we all need to get in a room and figure out what’s our plan,” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., told Fox News Digital. “And how are we going to get things done for the American people? That has to be the goal, and right now something needs to change.”

Republicans are readying to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol for the next three and a half years through budget reconciliation, which will require near-perfect unanimity in both chambers to work, given that Democrats are getting cut out of the process. 

But divisions between the chambers were laid bare during the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, when House Republicans, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., refused to consider the Senate’s compromise plan to reopen the agency. 

That decision prolonged the shutdown for nearly a month, and spurred the necessity to turn to reconciliation. It also fostered frustration between the Senate and House at a time when leadership and President Donald Trump are calling for unity.

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Both Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., have thin majorities to work with — Johnson more so than Thune. That reality isn’t something that’s lost on Senate Republicans, particularly on legislation that Democrats won’t support, and is so far preventing the knives from coming out in the upper chamber. 

“I mean, I think we understand the challenges that Mike has over there. He’s not king. He’s the speaker of the House,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital.
”And their margin of error is less than ours, proportionately. So I can’t imagine. I think he’s doing the very best he can.” 

Some Republicans argue that it’s more of a communication issue between the chambers than unfettered dysfunction in the House.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital he didn’t buy the “whole House’s dysfunction” argument, and instead said it was incumbent on senators to make more of an effort. 

“I think we have to take a little bit of ownership ourselves here in the Senate, and that’s certainly not [just] the leadership, but all of us,” Moreno said. “Because when we’re working on bills, we should have total, complete synchronicity with the House.” 

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House Republicans, for example, contended that they were blindsided by the Senate deal to reopen the bulk of DHS earlier this year that carved out funding for ICE and Border Patrol.

 “We’ve got to be able to make sure we’re communicating better and working through the issues,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital. “The House isn’t our enemy. We gotta be able to resolve all the issues on a piece of legislation. We have differences of opinion. OK, let’s work them out.”

The issue of communication is one that, since Republicans took control of both chambers last year, was largely handled by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the former GOP senator who acted as a de facto liaison between both chambers for major legislative pushes. 

When asked if Republicans needed a Mullin 2.0, Lankford said that the main points of communication fell on Thune and Johnson.

And Thune has not been quick to criticize Johnson or House Republicans publicly and noted that the nature of both chambers and how they operate would lead to issues along the way. 

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“We obviously have a 60-vote threshold,” Thune said.
”We need Democrats. You know, he doesn’t need Democrats, but he needs every Republican, and that’s a real challenge on a good day. And, you know, sometimes there aren’t a lot of good days around here.”

Conversely, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., argued that despite the issues, if Democrats were in control of the chambers, Americans would have been hit with the largest tax hike in decades had Republicans not mustered a unified front to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” 

“All of that would have been in the opposite if the Democrats had been in the majority and been able to do what they wanted to do to raise taxes,” Barrasso told Fox News Digital.