Republicans have six weeks before Democrats grab the Senate gavel and start a socialist wrecking job on the Trump agenda.
Plenty of GOP senators already sound ready to coast until the moving trucks pull up.
And John Kennedy told Sean Hannity what should happen to anyone caught loafing.
John Kennedy Wants the Whole Country to See the Attendance Sheet
US Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) sat down with Sean Hannity on Fox News to sort through the wreckage of the midterms and talk about what Republicans ought to do with the little time they have left.
Kennedy didn’t sound like a man in the mood to sit around. He told Hannity he wants to start work on one last party-line package, but he can’t move it without a green light from his own side.
“I’ve got to have permission of Senate leadership to do it. At the moment, they declined to give it to me. So if you know anybody, make a few calls, because we’ve got to do something,” Kennedy said.
Read that again. A sitting Republican senator went on national television and told millions of viewers that his own leadership said no.
Senators don’t usually hang that kind of laundry out on cable.
Hannity backed the push and tossed judicial nominations onto the pile. Kennedy called that “a given.”
Then Hannity asked the question that hangs over every lame-duck session in Washington, DC. Would the senators packing up their offices at the end of the term actually keep working until the final day?
Kennedy started gently. “I don’t mean any disrespect to anybody,” he said.
But he followed it with a line that should make a few people in the cloakroom squirm. He said that “if certain senators don’t show up to do their job, they should be named. The American people need to know who they are.”
He didn’t name anybody. He didn’t have to.
One Last Shot Before the Socialists Get the Keys
Some quick backstory helps here. Budget reconciliation lets the majority pass spending and tax bills with a simple 51 votes, so Democrats can’t kill it with a filibuster. Republicans already pushed two of these packages through while they held the White House and both chambers.
The midterms blew up that arrangement. Democrats flipped both chambers, and they take over in January.
Kennedy took the fight to the Senate floor before he ever reached Hannity’s set. He told colleagues to “put down our juice boxes and listen to the American people,” then urged them to “stop the bleeding, pick ourselves up and fight.”
He laid out a pitch most Republicans should be able to stomach. Kennedy wants at least $200 billion for the military and a fraud crackdown bill from US Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), with the savings going to pay down the debt. He told reporters the package could also carry a debt ceiling increase, which would yank that bargaining chip out of Democrat hands next year.
“Now those things are not gonna solve all of Toby and Edith’s problems, but at least it’ll show Toby and Edith that we’re trying to do something,” Kennedy said.
And for the colleagues already throwing in the towel, Kennedy had a less folksy message. “If your conclusion is that we shouldn’t try reconciliation because it might be hard to get the votes, then congratulations, you’re stupid,” he told The Washington Sun.
“You can’t put 12 things into a four-thing box,” he added.
Senate Republicans adopted a resolution pledging “to do everything humanly possible to pass a reconciliation bill” before Democrats take control on January 3. Fine words. But Majority Leader John Thune still says he doesn’t know whether the votes exist, and he gave the conference until Thanksgiving at the latest to decide.
US Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) sounded ready to pull the plug already. “None of the Venn diagrams work to get to 51, in my judgment, right now,” he said.
The Senators With One Foot Out the Door
Here’s where Hannity’s question gets interesting.
According to The Washington Sun, the senators still skeptical of another package include Tillis, US Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), US Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).
Tillis decided not to seek reelection. Cassidy lost his primary to Julia Letlow after President Trump endorsed her. Both men leave in January, and neither one faces another vote from the folks back home.
Nobody has accused either senator of planning to skip work. Kennedy certainly didn’t.
But a senator with no campaign ahead of him answers to nobody but his own conscience, and Tillis voted against the big reconciliation bill back in July 2025 anyway. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in the 2021 impeachment trial. Neither résumé screams “last man standing for the America First agenda.”
Kennedy has watched this movie before. Back in August, he told Hannity the Senate had fumbled the SAVE America Act and complained that “the Senate is like high school, but no one ever graduates. We blow opportunities like it’s our job.”
He also pushed to delay the leadership elections after the midterms and voted present on whether to move ahead with them. “What we as a conference right now need is honesty. We need focus. We need to try to reach a consensus on what we need to change,” he said.
Thune kept his job anyway.
Washington Already Fixed This Problem Once
Lame ducks used to run wild in this country.
Before 1933, a newly elected Congress didn’t take office until March, and defeated members came back every December to keep writing laws for a public that had just fired them. Nebraska Republican George Norris fought through the 1920s to end the racket, and the states finally ratified the 20th Amendment in January 1933, moving the start of each new Congress up to January 3.
Norris understood something Kennedy keeps hammering. A politician on his way out still owes his state a full day’s work.
Kennedy isn’t asking for a constitutional amendment. He’s asking for a roll call so voters can see who bothered to clock in.
That shouldn’t be a big ask. It apparently is.
Maybe Tillis has the arithmetic right and the votes just aren’t there. Maybe. But nobody finds out by refusing to put a bill on the floor, and leadership doesn’t get to call the game before anyone takes the field.
Kennedy put it plainly on the floor. “And some of my colleagues say, ‘Well, we can’t pass it, so we shouldn’t try.’ And I think that’s how we got beat.”
The contents of the package will spark their own fight. Paul told The Washington Sun that voters ranked the war and gas prices at the top of their concerns, a point the Vice President has openly acknowledged, and warned that ramming war money through on a party-line vote would look like Republicans tuned out the election. He has a point. The neoconservatives who sold that war already cost the party plenty, and a bill built around rooting out fraud and paying down debt would show voters somebody heard them.
Kennedy said himself that he’s “certainly, certainly open to other ideas.” The man wants a bill. He isn’t married to every line item.
Democrats Are Happy to Run Out the Clock
Democrats know exactly what’s going on here. Kennedy spelled out their strategy better than any of them would.
“Whatever we propose, in terms of policy, my Democrat colleagues are not going to go along because they’re going to be in charge in January, so they can just wait this out,” he said.
So they’ll wait. And the GOP margin shrinks next month when Senator-elect Sherrod Brown (D-OH) takes his seat.
Then the new majority goes to work. Democrats already want to cut off war funding through a stopgap bill, and the socialist wing that powered their wins wants government-run health care, amnesty, and a pile of new taxes on top of that. Every judge Republicans fail to confirm before January becomes a seat Chuck Schumer’s crowd gets to hold hostage.
Six weeks is a short window. Kennedy wants every Republican in the building for all of it, and he wants the voters to know which ones wandered off.
“You can talk yourself out of anything, and I concede this may fail. But why not try?” Kennedy said.
Sources:
“Sen John Kennedy: If senators don’t do their job, they should be named,” Hannity, Fox News
“Sen. John Kennedy: If Senators Don’t Do Their Job, They Should Be Named,” Grabien
“Kennedy urges Republicans to pass a reconciliation bill: ‘If we fail, we fail, but at least we will have tried,’” Office of US Senator John Kennedy
“Republicans Struggle to Find One Last Win in Congress,” The Washington Sun
“Republicans Face a Legislative Pileup With Just Weeks Left in Power,” The Washington Sun
“Senate Republican warns colleagues against downplaying midterm losses,” The Hill
“Thune will lead Republicans through the minority,” Roll Call
“Congress Returns for Lame-Duck Session,” WMAL
“Kennedy: ‘The Senate Is like High School, But No One Ever Graduates,’” Breitbart