President Trump held a marathon White House meeting with top House Republicans on Thursday as the lawmakers try to overcome deep intraparty differences about their legislative strategy for enacting GOP border and energy policy and tax cuts.
While the meeting reportedly resulted in some progress on policy issues, Trump declined to make a firm decision as to whether Republicans should pursue one bill, as House leaders want, or two, as the Senate is planning. Republicans reportedly also failed to set a total price tag for the spending bill or decide on how to deal with the need to raise the debt limit. Nevertheless, they said they plan to mark up a budget resolution in committee next week.
House Republicans have gotten bogged down in their effort to write a single sweeping reconciliation package that fulfills much of Trump’s agenda in one blow, including an extension of the 2017 tax cuts, a new round of tax reform, border security funding and major spending cuts.
House GOP leaders believe that one jumbo bill will have a better chance of passing than separate pieces of legislation, and they have laid out an ambitious timeline for passage over the next few weeks. But efforts to advance a budget blueprint this week came to a halt when fiscal hawks on the Budget Committee pushed for significantly larger spending cuts, postponing a committee vote while reminding everyone that reaching an agreement on the size and shape of the budget may be a major challenge given the conflicting demands of various Republican factions.
Earlier this week, House Freedom Caucus member Ralph Norman said the initial House budget resolution included $500 billion in spending cuts. Calling that figure a “nonstarter,” Norman said he is pushing for $2 trillion to $5 trillion in cuts.
Trump lays out his tax priorities: Trump reportedly detailed his specific priorities at Thursday’s meeting. He said he wants to fulfill his campaign pledges to eliminate income taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security; renew the 2017 tax cuts; raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction; close the carried interest tax break; provide tax breaks for companies that make products in the U.S.; and end tax breaks for wealthy sports team owners.
In terms of how the legislation gets passed, Trump has waffled on the issue, saying he would like to see “one big, beautiful bill” while also suggesting that he doesn’t really care how lawmakers approach the issue as long as it gets done.
Senate says time’s up: The Senate has signaled that it is finished waiting for the House to act and will move ahead with its own plan next week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune wants two separate reconciliation bills, with the first addressing the border and defense and the second focused on the more complicated issue of tax reform, to give Trump a quick victory in the first months of his new administration.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, chair of the Budget Committee, reportedly discussed his version of a budget resolution at a meeting with Republican senators Wednesday, with plans to vote on it next week. “I’ve always believed that one big, beautiful bill is too complicated,” Graham said after the meeting. “What unites Republicans for sure is border security and more money for the military. It’s important we put points on the board, and this plan of the president to deport people and get rid of the gangs and the criminals is running into a wall of funding.”
Graham’s plan reportedly includes about $300 billion in new spending, split between border security and defense. The new spending is to be paid for with spending cuts, including a rollback of some green energy programs passed under former President Joe Biden.
House pushes back: Johnson called on the Senate to slow down. “Our message to our friends and colleagues in the Senate is, allow the House to do its work,” Johnson told reporters after meeting with Trump. “We are moving this as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.”
Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith said Wednesday that Graham’s plan "would never pass” in the House. "[Graham] can control what he does in his chamber, and we can control what we can do in our chamber,” Smith said. “It’s kind of unfortunate that he’s going to go through a practice that doesn’t accomplish anything.”
Johnson backed up Smith, noting that the House is “a very different chamber with very different dynamics.”
“[T]he House needs to lead this if we're going to have success,” Johnson said.
Democrats warn on shutdown threat: As tensions rise between GOP leaders in the House and Senate, Democrats warned Republicans against allowing intraparty disputes to interfere with the passage of a government funding bill, which faces a March 14 deadline.
“As we have said repeatedly, avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray said in a joint statement. “Speaker Johnson is making the same mistake as former Speaker McCarthy did a year ago, by wasting precious time catering to the hard MAGA right. This tactic didn’t work last September and it will not work this year either. The House Republican funding proposal is an ominous case of déjà vu.”
“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path,” they added, “the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands.”
As the March deadline moves closer, and the House scheduled to be out of session during the week of February 17, some Republicans are recognizing that Congress will need to pass another short-term spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, to avoid a shutdown. Punchbowl’s Samantha Handler reported Thursday that Rep. Tom Cole, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, said there is a “growing appetite” for a continuing resolution among GOP lawmakers.