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Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is putting Senate Republicans on notice: with just 50-plus days left before Democrats take control of Congress in January, he wants the chamber working until the job is done, pushing a packed agenda that includes a third reconciliation bill, the SAVE America Act, DOGE spending cuts and a ban on congressional stock trading.
Kennedy made the case on the Senate floor this week and again on Fox News's The Sean Hannity Show on Wednesday, telling Republicans the midterm defeat was not a normal loss and the party has to win back the ordinary voters who left it. "Toby and Edith, they didn't stay home. They voted for Democrats, and we've gotta get Toby and Edith back," he said. "We've got 50-plus days while Republicans are still in charge."
His bluntest line came on the Senate floor, where he argued that the only way to deliver in the time left is through reconciliation, with Republican votes alone. "A smart man washes his hands after he ur*nates. A wise man doesn't ur*nate on his hands. We need to stop ur*nating on our hands," he said.
The agenda Kennedy is demanding action on starts with Reconciliation 3.0, a third budget reconciliation bill that can pass with 50 Republican votes plus Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaker, without a single Democratic vote. Through reconciliation, he wants the SAVE America Act, the election-integrity bill that would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, photo identification to cast a ballot, and all votes counted within 36 hours of Election Day. The House passed the bill three times in 2026, and each time it died in the Senate, where the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster were never there. Kennedy forced a vote in April on inserting key parts of the SAVE Act into a reconciliation bill; it failed 48-50.
Alongside it, Kennedy is pressing for DOGE reforms and cuts to government fraud, a ban on members of Congress trading stocks, tax breaks for home sellers, funding for the Department of Defense, and Sen. Joni Ernst's anti-fraud bill as another possibility. "You can't put 12 things into a four-thing box," he conceded. "We ought to be able to agree on money for defense, and we ought to be able to agree on at least one other policy."
Kennedy has said he is willing to stay in Washington through Thanksgiving and Christmas to get the work done, a call echoed by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who has urged Republicans to stay every day until Democrats are sworn in on January 3. Meanwhile, the Senate is heading into a three-day weekend. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has told members to expect to "stretch the calendar" to confirm judges and executive-branch nominees, and has said a decision on whether to attempt a reconciliation bill must come by Thanksgiving at the latest. The chamber's original calendar called for just eight scheduled session days in November and 14 in December.
The push comes a week after the November 3 midterm elections, in which Democrats swept both the House and the Senate. Kennedy signed on November 7 to Sen. Ron Johnson's effort to postpone the Senate leadership election, but the delay bid failed 15-31 and Thune was reelected leader unopposed on Tuesday, November 10. Kennedy is now pressing the leader he voted to keep to use the remaining weeks to deliver.
Not every Republican is convinced it can be done. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has said that "none of the Venn diagrams work to get to 51, in my judgment, right now," and Thune has said he is still not sure the party has the votes to advance a single-party measure of any kind. Kennedy's answer is to try anyway. "It's no excuse that, well, it may be hard to get the votes. 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 said. "I think we ought to surprise ourselves and do something intelligent and show the American people that we heard them. I concede this may fail. But why not try?"
As Kennedy put it: "Doing nothing is hard. You never know when you're finished."