House GOP Huddles With Trump to Nail Down Budget Game Plan

President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at a House Republican conference meeting in Trump National Doral resort, in Miami, Florida
(Reuters)
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy Monday! It's bound to be another wild week, as President Donald Trump continues to flood the zone - though he also played golf today at his Trump National Doral resort near Miami, where House Republicans are holding a policy retreat and looking to firm up their strategy for a budget reconciliation bill that could pair tax cuts with steep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other programs.

We've got details on that and more.

House Republicans Meet to Finalize Their Budget Game Plan

House Republicans are gathered in South Florida for a few days to flesh out their plans for the massive budget blueprint they want to pass in just four weeks' time.

Politico calls it a "make-or-break moment" for Trump's agenda.

They'll need to decide what will be included in that reconciliation bill, how they might pay for it, what they want in a separate government funding bill that will require Democratic votes, how they want to approach a necessary debt limit hike and what, if anything, might get left aside for later. And they'll need to figure out how best to work with President Donald Trump, who has laid out priorities that don't always align with those of GOP lawmakers, including an emphasis on tariffs and a push to further lower the corporate tax rate.

"Some Republicans have privately made it clear that they'd rather not include some of Mr. Trump's most expensive proposals in the legislation, especially as they battle concerns from hard-right Republicans that the bill will cost too much," Catie Edmondson and Andrew Duehren of The New York Times report.

House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the importance of this retreat. "You've all heard me talk about the proverbial playbook that we developed over the last year, leading up to this moment that we knew would happen," he told reporters at a news conference Monday afternoon. "Now we're working out the final sequence of the plays. So some big decisions will be made here in the next few days and we'll align with the Senate and our colleagues there and we will move forward on that agenda - the reconciliation process, the appropriations that we have to wrap up and the other issues that are upon us."

Trump spoke to lawmakers this evening about his agenda. Trump has promised to extend Republicans' 2017 tax cuts, some of which are set to expire at the end of the year, and he has floated other tax cuts along with plans to expand energy production and enact sweeping border and immigration changes. On Monday, he said he wants to keep his campaign promises to also eliminate taxes on tip income, Social Security benefits and overtime wages. At a rally on Saturday, he also teased the impossible idea of having tariffs completely replace taxes. "How about just no tax?" Trump said. "You know, if the tariffs work out like I think, a thing like that could happen, if you want to know the truth."

As Republicans try to enact Trump's agenda, House GOP leaders at the policy retreat are also scheduled to hold a town hall with their members on Tuesday morning before a session on the budget reconciliation outlook. That will be followed by a couple more days of breakout sessions and separate committee discussions about the reconciliation plan.

Johnson defends conditions on California aid: At his news conference, Johnson also defended Trump's demands for placing policy conditions - namely, the enactment of a voter ID law and water policy changes - on disaster aid funding for the Los Angeles wildfires. "I think that a commonsense notion that is supported by the vast majority of the American people who do not want to subsidize crazy California leftist policies that are dangerous for people," Johnson said. "Now, what the terms are and the details of that, we will be working it out."

Dems Could Use Debt Ceiling to Limit Trump Agenda

Republicans have long used the need to raise the debt ceiling as leverage in negotiations over federal spending, but now that there is total GOP control in Washington, with the Trump administration assuming responsibility for success or failure, it may be Democrats' turn to impose requirements on their cooperation in lifting the borrowing limit.

The debt ceiling was suspended by lawmakers in June 2023 but was reinstated on January 2 of this year, placing a $36.1 trillion cap on federal borrowing. Due to the risk of bumping up against that limit, the Treasury Department on January 21 started taking "extraordinary measures," short-term financial maneuvers that may include suspending reinvestments in certain federal employee retirement funds and halting an exchange rate stabilization program. Treasury officials will likely deploy those measures for the next several months, but at some point this spring or early summer, lawmakers will need to agree to raise the limit or risk defaulting on U.S. obligations.

The Washington Post's Joseph Bogage reports Monday that Democrats believe Republicans will need some Democratic votes to pass a debt ceiling increase or suspension, since a number of Republican lawmakers are unlikely to cooperate over concerns about the size of the national debt.

Some House Republicans have suggested linking a debt ceiling increase to aid to California in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires, with both provisions included in what is expected to be a massive government funding bill that lawmakers need to pass ahead of a March 15 shutdown deadline. But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected that option late last week, and Democrats are now developing a list of demands for their cooperation.

Perhaps the most significant demand Democrats are contemplating is the permanent elimination of the debt ceiling, a move that would rob Republicans of a powerful weapon in future budget negotiations.

"The days of Democrats just voting to raise the debt ceiling under a Republican president, they need to be over, period," Rep. Brendan Boyle, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told The Post. "We need to make sure that Democratic priorities are met, if we are in any way going to vote to increase the debt ceiling. But at the very least, we need to make sure there's a permanent resolution to the perennial debt ceiling dysfunction."

Boyle said he also wants to protect funding for social programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - massive parts of the budget that Republicans are reportedly considering cutting to help offset the cost of new tax cuts.

Sen. Ron Wyden, who sits on the Budget Committee and is the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, agreed that Democrats need to be careful that their cooperation in raising the debt ceiling doesn't end up simply making it easier for Republicans to slash taxes and increase deficits. "I am against these ideas to raise the debt ceiling in order to provide more tax breaks for billionaires," Wyden said.

Even some conservatives see the potential for Democrats to win significant concessions. Economist Michael Strain of the center-right American Enterprise Institute told the Post that they can probably do more than protect Medicaid or food stamps. "That would just be kind of fiddling around the edges of these programs when they could do something more meaningful and lasting," he said.

Bessent Confirmed as Treasury Secretary

The Senate on Monday confirmed Scott Bessent as secretary of the Treasury in a bipartisan 68-29 vote.

President Trump is expected to get more of his Cabinet nominees confirmed this week, after the Senate on Friday night cleared Pete Hegseth to take over at the Pentagon and followed up Saturday morning by approving Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary. Sean Duffy, nominated to be transportation secretary, is expected to be confirmed tomorrow.

Other confirmations are coming, but Trump's most controversial remaining nominations - Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health and human services secretary and Kash Patel to head the FBI - will also be in the spotlight this week as the Senate holds hearings.

Fiscal News Roundup

Views and Analysis