Speaker Mike Johnson and his GOP leadership team on Saturday sought to tamp down a brewing revolt on the budget resolution that emerged even before the Senate adopted the plan in the wee hours and gained steam later in the morning.
Johnson and the rest of the top four House Republican leaders sent a letter to the rank and file ahead of next week’s House vote on the Senate-revised budget blueprint assuring them that they will not accept watered-down spending cuts in the eventual filibuster-proof reconciliation bill the process is intended to unlock.
“We have and will continue to make it clear in all discussions with the Senate and the White House that —in order to secure House passage — the final reconciliation bill must include historic spending reductions while protecting essential programs,” the letter says.
The leadership comments come after key figures in the conference, including House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas; Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the Freedom Caucus policy chair, all expressed opposition to the Senate budget plan.
[Budget plan with dueling tax, spending targets OK’d in Senate]
Roy said he’s a flat-out “no” on the Senate-revised budget, which would allow for larger tax cuts and smaller spending cuts — and a bigger debt limit increase — than the House GOP budget “instructions” require. Harris said he can’t support it next week unless he sees the plan for achieving the level of cuts he and his House colleagues wrote into the House-adopted blueprint.
Arrington called the Senate changes “unserious and disappointing,” though he appeared willing to reserve judgment until the final reconciliation bill that will actually implement the tax and spending changes both chambers’ Republicans want.
The House GOP leadership letter Saturday picked up on that theme, laying out a process they say will lead to a pre-negotiated settlement between the two chambers.
The reconciliation bill “must be drafted using a collaborative process that results in a single product that both chambers can pass, and President [Donald] Trump can sign into law,” the leadership wrote. “We have made it clear the House will NOT accept nor participate in an ‘us versus them’ process resulting in a take it or leave it proposition from the Senate.”
The letter goes on to say that immediately after adopting the budget, House and Senate committees “will begin preparing together their respective titles of the reconciliation bill to be marked up in the next work period.”
The process House GOP leaders laid out appears to follow what Democrats and then-President Joe Biden employed during the 117th Congress when they enacted two reconciliation bills. Both of those packages went through committee markups in the House, but not in the Senate; but senators were able to make their voices heard through amendment “vote-a-ramas” in that chamber.
It wasn’t entirely clear yet that Senate panels would skip markups. But the goal either way appears to be pre-negotiated, bicameral text that could clear both chambers. The Senate may still need to make some changes to ensure compliance with that chamber’s “Byrd rule,” but the goal is to get started quickly to try to meet Johnson’s target of getting a final bill to Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.
“With the debt limit X-date approaching, border security resources diminishing, markets unsettled, and the largest tax increase on working families looming, time is of the essence,” House GOP leadership wrote. The Treasury Department’s borrowing authority is expected to run out sometime this summer or fall, and the 2017 tax cuts are set to expire at year’s end.
Johnson and his team wrote that this process has been discussed in “close consultation” with Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
A Thune aide wouldn’t comment except to say the leader wants to see the budget adopted quickly so Republicans “can move to the lawmaking phase of this process.” But GOP leaders in that chamber have their own hoops to jump through with their conference.
Senate squeaker
The Senate was able to squeak its revisions through in that chamber early Saturday on a 51-48 vote. They lost two Republicans — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — but GOP leaders in that chamber had to address a lot of concerns to keep losses from mounting.
The two biggest issues for Republicans in that chamber were a decision to use a “current policy” baseline to pass a larger tax-cut package and make it permanent without the need for offsets, as well as the potential scope of Medicaid cuts in the House.
To pick up votes, Senate GOP leaders added language stipulating that they intend to find $2 trillion in offsets to keep the deficit impact down, while promising to “protect” Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries from cuts other than to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Further, the chamber adopted an amendment from Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, saying Republicans will back legislation “strengthening and improving Medicaid for the most vulnerable populations.”
And Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., wavered in his support due to the change in Senate precedent enabling them to erase the cost of permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts.
Cassidy eventually backed the resolution after securing a commitment to achieve deeper spending cuts — and he was rattled by the week’s tariff-driven stock market crash as well, saying now was not the time for uncertainty that those tax cuts will be extended.
But even the Senate’s nonbinding language on the $2 trillion in savings has some wiggle room: executive actions that produce revenue, like Trump’s sweeping tariffs, could count towards that target. But House Republicans want to get there through cuts to mandatory benefit programs — including Medicaid, which is at the heart of the problems facing Trump and GOP leaders in both chambers.
The post House GOP won’t be jammed by Senate on budget, leaders pledge appeared first on Roll Call.
