House Republican leaders emerged late Thursday from a roughly three-hour meeting without an agreement on the contours of the massive budget reconciliation package they’ve been talking about for weeks.
But they planned to work through the weekend ironing out details with a goal of marking up the blueprint needed for the filibuster-proof bill early next week.
Speaker Mike Johnson said he’ll be working Saturday and through Sunday’s Super Bowl taking place in New Orleans — in his and Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s home state of Louisiana. President Donald Trump, who hosted House GOP leaders for several hours to discuss reconciliation earlier in the day, is slated to attend the game Sunday.
“We are almost there,” Johnson said. “A couple final details that we’ve got to work out.”
The late-night meeting in the speaker’s office included lawmakers representing different viewpoints within the GOP conference, including Republican Policy Committee Chairman Kevin Hern of Oklahoma.; Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland; Riley Moore, a freshman from West Virginia; and Mike Lawler, a sophomore from a New York district Kamala Harris won in November. Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Republican Conference Charwoman Lisa McClain of Michigan were also there.
Earlier in the day, top Republicans met with Trump at the White House to try to work through remaining issues. The key sticking point going in was cost: Trump’s priorities for the package, including permanent extensions of his 2017 tax cuts plus new tax breaks and spending, could push the price tag near $6 trillion.
Republicans have been trying to hammer out ways to paper over the cost with things like revenue from expected economic growth, spending cuts mandated by Trump via executive orders as well as tariffs the president has already announced or might soon. Members of the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives appear willing to stomach some offsets using unconventional scoring methods but have been pushing for upwards of $2 trillion in bona fide spending cuts over 10 years.
Lawmakers leaving the late-night meeting in Johnson’s office wouldn’t confirm that they’d agreed to that figure. Scalise suggested that not only were there some potential scoring issues with the Congressional Budget Office, but that GOP leaders needed to make sure other members who weren’t in the meeting were comfortable with what’s being proposed.
“We still aren’t in agreement on the topline,” Scalise said. “You’re talking about big changes. You need to make sure, not just, you know, something that could pass out of the Budget Committee but something that can pass the whole House.”
“We’re pretty close on a range, we just … need to get answers on some very specific questions, and then that will open up the number,” he added.
Scalise said meetings would continue with members on Friday. But he didn’t seem concerned about Senate Republicans readying their own budget resolution for a markup next week.
That measure would only tackle a handful of Trump’s priorities. But they are big ones — immigration and border security, military spending and domestic energy production — and could potentially get done a lot sooner given that the tax issues are much more costly and complicated. Senate Republicans plan to try to get Trump on board with their approach at a dinner Friday night at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
“At the end of the day, the House has unique dynamics, and we’ve got to move based on what the House can come to agreement on,” Scalise said. “And you know when we talk about doing one big bill, it includes all of the president’s priorities … The Senate’s probably leaving his most, you know, kind of high-profile piece out of their first bill. And it may — there may not be a second bill if they go down that road. And that’s been a big concern from the beginning.”
Another wrinkle that could ultimately tip the scales in the House’s favor with Trump: the debt limit.
Freedom Caucus members have been pushing to raise the $36 trillion statutory borrowing cap in the reconciliation package, lest Republicans have to go through regular order and make concessions to Democrats. And Trump has been saying since before his inauguration that he wants the debt limit issue taken off the table, possibly for his entire presidency.
“We’re talking about the debt limit as well,” Scalise said, adding that it “could be” part of the reconciliation bill.
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