House GOP divided on key issues as Senate moves forward on Trump agenda plan

House Republicans are divided over some of the thorniest issues at the center of their plan to pass President Trump’s legislative agenda, disagreements that are threatening to derail their timeline just days before the Senate is aiming to advance a competing plan.

Arriving at the Capitol on Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who attended the Super Bowl on Sunday with Trump and Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is behind the Senate proposal — said the House could “maybe” advance a budget resolution by the end of this week, another delay in his timeline after he told reporters it was his hope that the blueprint would move through committee on Tuesday. A budget resolution would unlock the process Republicans are aiming to use to pass large swaths of Trump’s ambitious agenda.

“We’ll see,” the Speaker said. “We’re working through the final details of this, we’re very close, but there’s a couple of big issues left on the table.”

Those matters, Johnson said, are raising the debt limit, increasing the deduction cap on state and local taxes and how to pay for the tax cut extensions, a question that has been at the center of the GOP talks.

“There’s some internal discussion and debate about exactly how we cover the cost of expanding the tax cuts and achieving the other priorities,” Johnson said. “And there are lots of different ideas on how to do that. And so my job is to find the consensus on the ideas that everyone will agree with and at what level.”

Johnson declined to give a specific forecast for when a budget resolution could advance out of committee — ”I’m not gonna give a projected day yet because then you’ll all tell me that I overshot” — but insisted that the group is moving along according to schedule.

“Everybody relax,” he said. “We’re right on the time that we need to be and we’re working through it, so we’ll get there.”

Pressure is mounting on the House to reach an agreement. On Wednesday, the Senate is set to mark up a budget resolution for the first of two reconciliation bills, which would address immigration and defense. House Republicans are aiming to pack Trump’s entire agenda into one bill.

Republicans are looking to use the budget reconciliation process to advance Trump’s agenda, which would allow them to circumvent Democratic opposition in the Senate but requires near unanimity among the conferences in both chambers. The first step in the budget reconciliation process is passing a budget resolution.

The current dynamics are spelling trouble for House Republicans.

“Things are not great,” one House Republican told The Hill. “We always knew these tight margins would be a problem. I think it’s fair to say they are proving to be even more problematic than maybe we thought.”

“We’re gonna get it done. It is not going to be pretty or smooth, but it’ll get done,” they added.

Johnson on Monday brushed off any concerns about the upper chamber complicating the process, telling reporters that he spoke with Graham at the Super Bowl and contending that they are on the same page despite the two chambers moving forward with different strategies.

“I wouldn’t say it’s helpful,” Johnson said when asked if it is helpful for Graham to plow ahead with his budget resolution. “Look, we all feel the same sense of urgency, we don’t need anymore pressure points on that because we're all trying to do the same thing as quickly as possible.”

“I can show you a photo on my phone where we both held up the one finger, and I said 'one beautiful bill' and he smiled,” the Speaker added. “There is no daylight between us, we all want exactly the same thing, we are working on the best and most effective and efficient way to get there.”

Pressed on why the House is having a more difficult time advancing a budget resolution, Johnson responded: “Because I have 170 additional people to deal with than Lindsey Graham does.”

Adding to Johnson’s dilemma, the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Monday introduced an alternative budget resolution that, similar to the Senate version, would be the first in a two-bill reconciliation strategy and does not outline tax cut extensions that Trump wants.

The Freedom Caucus proposal, called the “Emergency Border Control Resolution,” includes $200 billion in new funding for the Trump administration to pursue border and immigration initiatives and would direct committees to cut $486 billion, which it says would result in $286 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years. And in a major concession by many of those skeptical of raising the debt limit, the proposal would increase the nation’s borrowing limit by $4 trillion.

Trump has called on Republicans to not allow Democrats to use the debt limit, which will need to be increased by about midyear, as a leverage point. But the high number of fiscal hawks in the House GOP means the debt limit issue adds yet another complicating factor to passing the Trump agenda.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of two members who has never voted to raise the debt limit and wants to see dramatic cuts before doing so, on Friday told The Hill he was not committing to supporting any debt limit hike based on what he was hearing so far. And he named three other members who will be hardest to get on board for a debt ceiling increase: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.).

Johnson and other GOP leaders had considered trying to address the debt limit in some other kind of must-pass measure that could get support from Democrats, but recent negotiations — and resistance from Democrats to help Republicans at all — have changed that calculus.

The Speaker on Monday said that the “intention” is to include a debt limit hike in the House reconciliation package, but that is one of the sticking points preventing Republicans from finishing their single-bill Trump agenda framework.

Another one of those sticking points, Johnson said, is the state and local tax deduction (SALT) cap. Lifting or increasing the $10,000 cap, which Trump signed into law as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that he wants extended, is a major priority for blue-state Republicans whose constituents are directly impacted by the cap — but it would be an expensive policy shift that would make fiscal hawks demand more cuts elsewhere.

“Trying to get to a resolution on it that is satisfactory to everyone,” Johnson said of SALT. “You know, it’s a contentious issue. The red states and the blue states have a big disagreement on the matter. But we’ve got to have some meaningful change to it because it will be helpful to a lot of people. So that’s one of the final, I’d say, three issues that we’re trying to get to the right sort of equilibrium point.”

SALT is just one of the expensive tax demands from Trump that is making it difficult for Republicans to find enough cuts, or “savings,” to appease fiscal hawks.

Trump also wants to make a number of expiring provisions from the TCJA permanent, and he wants to fulfill campaign promises like eliminating taxes on tips, Social Security and overtime pay. The nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated last week that Trump’s tax priorities could cost $5 trillion to $11.2 trillion over a decade.

Johnson on Monday said that making the TCJA cuts permanent was “doable,” while recognizing the tricky issue of offsets. Last week, some House Republicans discussed potentially extending the cuts for a shorter amount of time.

“We have to make real decisions. And that’s where we are,” Johnson said. “We have a huge national, federal debt, and it’s not sustainable, and what we’re doing now is spending the money of our children and grandchildren, and many of us have a moral concern about that. So we have to figure out how to do this responsibly, and we will, so stay tuned on that.”

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