Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman (WY-At Large) has done something not too many Republicans have done in the 2026 midterm elections; she has won a Senate seat. Granted, Wyoming is a pretty deep-red state, but at this juncture we shouldn't look any gift horses in the mouth. She won, and that's a good thing.
Turns out that Senator-elect Hageman has some ideas for how to make the best use of the more or less 60 days remaining of the 119th Congress, most especially in the Senate. In a conversation with Just The News, laid some of those ideas on the table.
Rep. Harriet Hageman, soon to be sworn in as Wyoming's next U.S. senator, told Just the News on Thursday night that she is urging fellow Republicans to replicate their last budget reconciliation law that funded Trump's Homeland Security agenda until the end of his presidency and codify other GOP priorities and foil Democrats' ambitions in the next Congress.
Such a move would require only 51 votes in the Senate, bypassing the blockade of a filibuster rule, then allow Trump to use his veto pen to thwart Democrat efforts in the next Congress to overturn his priorities, thus securing them through the 2028 election.
"I think we ought to do another reconciliation package and fund some of these programs and agencies that we know that the Democrats are going to target," Hageman said during a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.
That would be great, and if the outgoing Senate could manage to pass the Save America Act as well, that would be more than the icing on the cake, it would be more cake on the cake. But as great as this would be, it probably won't happen. Here's why, and I'm going to tell you.
First, even with the 119th Congress still in place, there probably aren't 50 votes for it. There are too many nominally Republican senators still seated whose Trump Derangement Syndrome is very nearly as advanced as, say, Chuck Schumer's. Those senators aren't going to vote for anything that will help the Trump administration keep its agenda moving forward.
Second, there is a distinct tendency to avoid rocking the boat among members of an outgoing Congress that has just lost their jobs. Oh, they have 60 days, sure, but as a matter of history, most of these people seem more concerned with some possible resurrection of their political careers at some point, and that means not doing anything the people are liable to remember, for better or worse.
But here's the real problem.
Hageman's idea got an immediate endorsement from fellow Republican Rep. Randy Fine, of Florida, another of the few Republicans to have good election nights Tuesday. Fine got 5% more votes in 2026 than his first election to Congress.
"I think that's a great idea," he told the same show. "Look, I'm going back to D.C. tomorrow. I'm happy to stay there around the clock until Jan. 3 to get the job done for the American people.
"Part of the reason we lost the majority is voters didn't think we worked that hard," he also said. "They saw the Senate not even trying to pass the Save America Act, and they said, 'What's the point in having them?' Well, we've got two months left, and we should use every minute to the maximum advantage that we have."
Yes, that's exactly true; just take a look at X or anywhere in the conservative media and blogosphere, and you'll see plenty of people complaining about the slow pace of the 119th Congress, especially the Senate. That was a problem, and now, after losing the Senate, there's no reason to think these people are suddenly going to turn into Wacky Racers now.
It's an unfortunate fact of politics that good ideas aren't necessarily adopted into policy just because they are good ideas.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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