House Republicans confront Iran war and gas prices as they struggle to push economic agenda

DORAL, Florida (CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team have been struggling to find consensus behind an election-year agenda to address Americans’ chief concerns over affordability and their cost-of-living.

But now they have a new problem: Rising gas prices.

After hammering Democrats relentlessly over $5-per-gallon gasoline, a threshold that was crossed when Joe Biden was president, Republicans are confronting a similar dilemma in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran. Gas prices are threatening to spike indefinitely with the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint where roughly 20% of crude oil shipments pass through, virtually shut down as a result of the conflict.

Republicans are left with this message: Just hope that the war ends soon and crude oil prices settle in time for November.

“Temporary blip,” Johnson asserted.

“Snapshot in time,” said Rep. Lisa McClain, the No. 4 House Republican.

“Short-term volatility,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York.

Others – like Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri – said Republicans need to convince voters to stomach the pain.

“I think it’s our job to help bring people along to them and explain what’s at stake,” Alford said. “I’m willing to pay 30% or 30 cents more at the pump to make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon that’s going to hit the United States.”

It’s not what the GOP thought they’d be discussing weeks ago, as they hashed out their agenda for their three-day retreat here at Trump’s golf resort in Doral. But as Iran is now dominating their focus, they’re running short on time – and votes – to execute their agenda.

Johnson is leaning hard on Republicans to get behind another big legislative push this spring – in the wake of successfully enacting Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” last summer. But he’s facing growing doubts from within his own conference and in the Senate.

And even his top taxwriter, Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, says it’s time to drop the effort.

“We have a smaller majority now than what we did when we passed the first reconciliation bill,” Smith told CNN, referring to the fast-track budget process Republicans used to pass the measure along party lines in the Senate. “I said all along that we needed to do one big, beautiful bill because I never saw a pathway that two different reconciliations would happen. I would love to do two reconciliations, but I’m also a realist.”

Some Republicans think they’ll need to pass a party-line bill to replenish munitions stocks depleted in the Iranian war effort. Otherwise, they’ll need at least seven Democrats in the Senate to help them overcome a filibuster and pass new funding.

But Republicans had an excruciatingly difficult time wrangling the votes to pass Trump’s massive bill last summer. And with an even slimmer House majority now, leaders will need near unanimity in their conference to get anything out of the House. Any member with an objection to the legislation would have outsized leverage in influencing it – and there are sharp divisions on what to include in the bill and how to pay for it.

Plus Johnson hasn’t even laid out what he wants to see in a new election-year bill that he says will focus on cost-of-living issues, indicating he is still trying to get consensus within his conference.

“Stay tuned,” Johnson said when asked about the details of the plan.

At the Tuesday session in Doral, Republicans heard presentations from some of Trump’s senior advisers, including top White House aide James Blair and his former campaign aide, Chris LaCivita. The message, according to members who attended the session: GOP groups are raising tons of cash and can defy the odds to hold the House, arguing that Democratic opposition to Republicans’ tax cuts will be a salient issue in the fall campaign.

But GOP lawmakers later said the challenge remains in staying unified on their message – a challenge with a mercurial president – and to make sure they can break through to voters as Iran and other crises dominate the headlines.

“People who are frustrated with the increased price of oil and gas. That’s to be expected,” said Rep. Dale Strong, an Alabama Republican. “But this is war.”

But the president’s top legislative priority has not been on an economic agenda – it’s been on passing the so-called SAVE America Act, a measure that would require proof-of-citizenship and voter ID to cast a ballot and has virtually no chance of passing the Senate.

“It must be done immediately,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE.”

It’s even animated House conservative hardliners who are demanding that Johnson include the legislation into a party-line bill to advance the GOP economic agenda. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to bypass a filibuster to otherwise pass the legislation.

“It’s just a reality, and I’m a person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up. But that’s just, those are the facts,” Thune said Tuesday.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, a retiring Washington Republican, said at the retreat that Trump’s focus on the “SAVE America Act” is playing into Democrats’ hands – especially if the president carries through with his threat to refuse to sign legislation until the bill passes Congress.

“It’s going to be part of the Democrat playbook,” Newhouse said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Alison Main and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.