In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s second presidency, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham got some unexpected news.

Graham was one of the longest-serving members of the Senate’s budget committee and, based on seniority, would be its chairman for the 119th Congress — a job poised to place him at the center of some of the biggest policy fights of the next six months. He’d not only be responsible for ushering the big, beautiful bill across the Senate floor, a herculean task given Republicans’ three-seat majority. But he’d also be leading a rag-tag group of opinionated Republicans who sat on the panel, many of them fiscal hawks.