Just how committed was the Senate GOP to passing its version of the president’s budget? Past 4 a.m. in the morning committed, according to the clock on the chamber floor. Thanks to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Thursday’s debate turned into a raucous overnighter, with Republicans fending off hundreds of the Democrats’ attempts to gum up the process in a grueling 10-hour debate. But the sleeplessness paid off. By the time both parties lumbered off to bed, Senate Republicans had won their race with the House. The question now is: will it matter?

For the last few weeks, the two chambers have been locked in an intra-party duel, fighting it out to see whose proposal would cross the finish line first: the House with its “one big, beautiful bill” of defense, energy, border security, and tax cut priorities — or the Senate with its scaled-down, two-part plan. To the surprise of everyone, Trump made his preference public, siding with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and bolstering the fractured chamber’s chances at success.

On Truth Social, the president praised both the House and Senate for “doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM” but called on Senate Republicans to look to the House, rather than dividing up his agenda to pass in smaller chunks. “House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” he wrote. “We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”

Even Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was blindsided. “Did not see that one coming,” the Republican told reporters. “I think we’re all heading in the same direction,” he wanted people to know. “We all want to get to the same result and ultimate destination. How we get there is still a point of discussion,” the Senate GOP leader said before joking, “It’d be really boring if we had a unicameral system, wouldn’t it?”

And while the media loves to stir the pot, hyping the battle between the two sides of the Capitol as a vicious feud, Johnson insists it’s all been over-dramatized. “There’s no daylight between the Senate and the House,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “The media has been trying to divide the two chambers, trying to divide Republicans against one another,” he insisted. “We’re not having that. We’re all on exactly the same team. We have the exact same mission. We all want to check each of these boxes. There’s just been different ideas on how to achieve that. But I’ve told my colleagues in the Senate [and] in the House, really doing it in one big package is really the only way to achieve the highest probability of success.”

When he was asked about his relationship with Thune and Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the speaker explained that there’d been an open line of communication from the beginning. “They’re both close friends,” the Louisianan reiterated, “and I’ve spoken to both of them almost constantly through the process multiple times over this past week. Everything’s cordial, everything is friendly. We’re all doing the same thing. I think that the way they think of their effort is it’s almost sort of a backup plan or something,” he said, “but I told them that the House is going to work overtime to ensure the success of this, and we’ll get everybody on the same page.”

Of course, you can’t blame people for being skeptical — and the speaker knows it. “I have 165 more personalities to deal with than the Senate’s 53 Republicans,” Johnson pointed out, “and lots of different interests.” Despite that, he continued, “What really is important on our side, and thus for the whole Congress — the Senate included — is that we move it in ‘one big, beautiful bill.’ We have to have all of the easy parts with the hard parts, to put it in layman’s terms, because we’re going to have to extend the Trump-era tax cuts. … They’re going to expire at the end of this year by default if we do nothing, and then we’ve got to do a lot of other things as well. All of our campaign promises, the things that President Trump ran for president on,” they all hinge on getting this reconciliation package through the House.

From his seat in the upper chamber, Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) doesn’t envy Johnson’s job. “I think the probabilities of them running into a roadblock are more than 50-50,” he speculated. “It makes it a whole lot easier if we’ve only got one bill to go through. We hope it’s doable for them. But if it’s not, then this is the next best deal. We don’t want to be stuck without any other alternatives. This doesn’t hurt.” At the end of the day, he explained, “One of the reasons why we’re doing ours is just in case they can’t get a consensus on their big, beautiful bill. We may have to do it in small, really beautiful bills.”

Family Research Council’s Quena Gonzalez, senior director of Government Affairs, sees the wisdom in that. “The Senate is moving a budget resolution basically as insurance, in case the House — with its tiny margin — gets stuck.” If anything, he said, “This should serve as a motivator for … the House to come together — and presumably the president’s team will encourage them to — because one of the key differences between the House and Senate approaches is that the House package includes President Trump’s signature tax cuts.”

When push comes to shove, Gonzalez told The Washington Stand, “There’s a difference between campaigning and governing. We’ll see whether House Republican rank-and-file members remember that when they return next week to work on the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ — with tax cuts! — that President Trump is asking for.”

In the meantime, the speaker is desperately trying to ease the worries surrounding his wafer-thin majority. “I don’t think it will come to that,” he told Perkins of the backup plan. “I certainly hope it doesn’t, because as I’ve said consistently … the reason President Trump often says … it has to be one big, beautiful bill, and the House’s budget resolution is the one that should prevail … is because we know that we have a heavier lift in the House than we do in the Senate. So, Plan A is really the only plan,” the speaker insisted, “and that’s the one we’ve been pursuing since day one.” House leaders have been talking about it before the election even took place, Johnson stressed. “That’s what we’re going to do in the House, and I’ve got to lead it that way.”