Getting a dozen politicians to agree on anything is difficult enough. Try 271. That’s how many personalities Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will have to juggle if Donald Trump’s big-ticket policies have any chance of passing. As both men will tell you, compromise isn’t easy on Congress’s routine business — let alone on a basket of priorities that could make or break the GOP’s political future.

In what had to be a warning sign for both chambers, the Senate is having a harder time than usual getting everyone on the same page. “Thune’s been having these small-group discussions,” a GOP senator told The Hill, “[and] in the one I was in, Senate Republicans were all over the map. There was no consensus. I’m hoping,” the member continued, “that the House has a little clearer meeting of the minds than we do.”

The idea that Johnson’s chamber would be more united than Thune’s would have been unthinkable even two months ago. It’s an astonishing twist in the story of the House’s wafer-thin majority — but it’s also a credit to the speaker, who, with the president’s help, continues to beat the odds when it comes to keeping his brittle caucus together.

For now, though, the temporary chumminess of Johnson’s chamber seems to be one of the few bright spots in the murky picture of reconciliation. In order to unlock the process that lets the Senate pass budget legislation with a simple majority, the two sides of the Capitol have to agree on a long list of sticking points. Can Republicans agree on how much spending to cut? And if they can, is it possible to do it without touching Medicaid and with a boost in defense dollars? Should they make the Trump tax cuts permanent or just extend them? Should raising the debt ceiling even be part of this package? And if so, by how much? All of these political hot potatoes and more could trip up — or worse, kill — the progress Republicans have made so far.

Complicating matters, the House and Senate have very different views — not just on strategy, but on the timetable too. As Johnson told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “Remember, we’re trying to get this to the president’s desk before Memorial Day in early May, because then we’ll see the effects of it quickly. That’s a really important thing.”

The reason for this “very aggressive timetable,” the speaker continued, is that “we need to get to the certainty [for the business environment] as soon as possible.”

His Senate counterpart, on the other hand, has argued that a Memorial Day timeline “is unrealistic, and that getting it passed by the end of July is a more attainable target.” To conservatives like Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), that doesn’t benefit anyone. “You hear some senators trying to slow-walk this, [by saying], ‘Well, maybe we can get this done before August,’” he pointed out on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” But that approach “tak[es] away the sense of urgency,” Davidson insisted.

“I think there are a lot of us [who] are concerned that we shouldn’t be talking about anything but staying on offense,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any effort to slow down the president’s agenda or to slow the momentum that we’re building [to save] money for taxpayers. And so, the discussions are ongoing right now. And I think Senator Thune and Speaker Johnson are going to set a different tone than that slow-walking verbalization that’s been taking place in the Senate.”

The two leaders met on Tuesday with that subject very much on the agenda. Along with Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), and Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent, the small group hoped to hash through some of the major stumbling blocks and “sync up” on the framework moving forward.

In the meantime, the importance of the moment is palpable. “Look, some of the Trump tax reform has already expired,” Davidson reminded listeners on Tuesday’s show. Some, he explained, are business provisions that would affect whether companies invest in America. “But the individual provisions, if we don’t take action this year, nearly every American who pays taxes will see a tax increase,” he stressed. “And that’s what’s at stake.”

Then, of course, there are the president’s other talking points — like “no tax on tips.” “And for us to do that it takes a change in law,” the Buckeye reiterated. “But the things that are truly partisan ultimately need to go in the reconciliation bill. And what has become partisan that used to be bipartisan [are] things like not wasting money,” he said. “And even the Government Accountability Office says over $100 billion in Medicaid and Medicare are going to improper payments. So why would we see people defending improper payments? Why would we let another year go by when we fail to act? We should pass something to reform this immediately.”

As for the Senate’s priorities, Davidson agreed, “We do need to increase funding for border security, and we need to increase funding for defense in a way that’s laser-focused on America’s national security. … Those are part of Senator [Lindsey] Graham’s (S.C.) approach. They’re anticipated to be part of the House approach as well.” But a major snag, he warns, is that the House “set the stage to deal with tax reform.” “The Senate hasn’t yet gotten there, and that’s part of why they want to slow-walk it.” And frankly, he said, “The Senate doesn’t have the same sense of urgency on tax reform, in part because there are no blue state senators. And we have colleagues in the Republican conference in the House … that come from states like New York and New Jersey and California, where there is a sense of urgency to deal with the high state and local tax issues they’re confronting.”

Those dynamics only add to the friction. But, as even Thune conceded, “It’s a bicameral process. … If we’re going to win, [we’ve] got to play on both sides of the ball. That’s the nature of the beast.” In the end, he added, “We have to come together."