“I don’t rule it in or out. I mean, it’s an option. And I think we want to have optionality,” Thune said of reconciliation. “I think if we came up with some healthcare policy that drives down costs and that we can’t get Democrats to buy in and support, I mean, ideally, it’d be nice to have a bipartisan solution on healthcare, but absent that, I think reconciliation is always an option.”

Thune’s open-ended approach is starkly different than the one pursued by Johnson, who is already promising a partisan healthcare bill in the first quarter of next year that could be passed through reconciliation.

Part of that difference boils down to a deeper well of support for the subsidies among Senate Republicans, albeit with new limits to restrict eligibility. Johnson infuriated a band of centrist Republicans for snubbing an Obamacare vote, culminating in their Wednesday decision to end-run the speaker and support a Democratic bill; yet, they comprise a vocal minority of the Republican conference.

At the same time, Thune is reluctant to pursue another reconciliation package without clear political support for the exercise. The process is not only cumbersome, forcing multiple overnight voting sessions, but some of the healthcare provisions Republicans sought to pass as part of Trump’s tax bill were already ruled ineligible by the Senate parliamentarian.

“If you’re going to do reconciliation, you want to have a reason to do it,” Thune said. “Obviously, it’s a long, arduous process here in the Senate. And you’re talking about a couple of ‘vote-a-ramas,’ you got to write a budget resolution, but if there’s a reason to do it, yeah.”

He suggested that any reconciliation bill would be larger than healthcare and could include provisions that did not make it into Trump’s megabill earlier this year.

“There’s other stuff in the tax space, a few things that probably got left on the cutting room floor in the tax bill last summer, the reconciliation bill last summer, but anything that sort of falls under the committee’s jurisdiction or has a budgetary impact is eligible,” Thune said. “And so, we’re always looking for candidates for a reconciliation bill in the event there’s political support for doing it.”

For now, Thune is allowing Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) to jumpstart cross-aisle negotiations after dueling healthcare proposals, one from Republicans and one from Democrats, failed on the Senate floor last week.

The deal, should one come together, would not get a vote until January at the earliest, meaning the enhanced subsidies, passed by Democrats during the pandemic, will expire at the end of the year. However, Collins, who convened roughly two dozen senators on Monday to restart healthcare talks, has already released a proposal with Moreno extending the subsidies for two years. Collins told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that she hopes to share an updated framework later this week.

Thune also noted earlier in the day that the Senate could use the Democratic healthcare bill, slated to get a House vote in January, over the objections of Johnson, as a “revenue vehicle” for an eventual deal. Republicans oppose that legislation, a simple, three-year extension, given that it does not impose new fraud and income restrictions on the subsidies, but Thune suggested it could be retooled.

In the absence of a bipartisan agreement, Republicans have begun to coalesce around a series of proposals that unify the party and do not require Democratic support. Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), two committee chairmen with jurisdiction over healthcare, released a plan that lets Obamacare subsidies expire while directing new funds to health savings accounts.

In the House, Johnson passed a modest bill on Wednesday that expands association health plans, beefs up transparency requirements for pharmacy benefit managers, and earmarks funds for “cost-sharing reductions.”

“This is just the first of many. We’re going to do more of this in the first quarter of next year,” Johnson told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump, for his part, has dismissed the idea of doing another big package, declaring “we got everything” done in the first reconciliation bill, and has oscillated between supporting a bipartisan Obamacare extension and legislation that can only attract Republican votes.

THUNE CLEARS GOP MINIBUS LOGJAM WITH HELP FROM TRUMP

Crapo echoed Thune on Wednesday when asked if Republicans should pursue reconciliation again.

“I’m not talking about reconciliation right now. I think we ought to go through regular order and build a bill that gets 60 votes, if we can,” Crapo said.