Sweeping safety-net cuts have GOP centrists questioning Johnson’s budget
Speaker Mike Johnson has cleared a major hurdle toward unlocking the massive, party-line bill he’s pursuing to enact President Donald Trump’s vast domestic agenda. Now he’s got more jumping to do.
On Thursday, as Republican hard-liners celebrated a concession they won from party leaders to force deeper spending cuts as part of the GOP’s sweeping policy push, centrists expressed deep alarm about the trajectory of the massive legislation that will include border security, energy, defense and tax provisions.
The emerging fault lines are many: GOP members in high-tax blue states are concerned that the plan doesn’t leave enough room to expand the state and local tax deduction. And Senate Republicans and some House hard-liners aren’t ready to give up on a competing two-bill plan.
But Johnson’s most immediate problem comes from swing-district Republicans who believe that the steep spending cuts Johnson wants across Medicaid, food assistance and other safety-net programs for low-income Americans could cost them their seats — and Johnson his razor-thin GOP majority.
"I don’t know where they’re going to get the cuts," said Rep. David Valadao, who represents a heavily Democratic district in central California, as he left the Capitol on Thursday.
The House Budget Committee cleared the fiscal blueprint for the massive policy bill on a party-line vote late Thursday night, and Johnson intends to bring it to the floor when the House returns from recess later this month.
But with a two-vote majority, Johnson has virtually no room for error. And opposition from members like Valadao could force him and committee chairs to go back to the drawing board.
Low-key and soft-spoken, Valadao is the stylistic and ideological opposite of the fire-breathing hard-liners on Johnson’s right flank. His district in California’s Central Valley is one of the six Hispanic-majority GOP seats where more than 20 percent of households receive food aid benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is being targeted under the GOP budget for some $230 billion in spending cuts.
“Obviously Medicaid and SNAP are ones that I'm very much watching,” Valadao said.
He believes he is speaking for a larger group of House Republicans who are worried about what the cuts will mean for their districts. Johnson’s own Louisiana district has a high rate of households that rely on food assistance, and hospital systems across the country rely on Medicaid revenue to stay in the black.
“There's a lot of us, even leadership themselves, I think a lot of their districts are in the same boat as mine or close to it,” Valadao said.
The California Republican is also among the Republicans from high-tax blue states who worried the latest budget plan doesn’t provide enough room to sufficiently expand the SALT deduction, with more than a dozen votes at stake.
It’s also far from certain how the House GOP plan will play in the Senate, which has a long history of heavily editing tax plans sent across the Rotunda. There’s roughly 40 provisions that expire at the end of this year, and Trump has a slew of tax cuts he wants on top of that, with lawmakers in both chambers prepared to do battle over their favorite perks.
The concerns about Medicaid cuts go just as deep, including inside the White House. Valadao referenced private conversations Trump had with GOP centrists on that subject last month. The president himself has been reticent to approve anything that could be perceived as a cut to health care given the collapse of his prior efforts in that realm back in 2017.
Valadao, referring to the major Medicaid reforms that would be required under the House GOP budget plan, said, “I think that goes against what he’s said and has been saying to members, both privately and publicly.”
House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), whose committee is tasked with shouldering more than half of the proposed spending cuts, has acknowledged that some changes to Medicaid might not be able to pass the House. That includes so-called per-capita caps, a major cost-saver that would convert the program from an open-ended entitlement to a population-based grant to states. But conservatives say the White House has been open to some Medicaid reforms, and House GOP leaders have been in close contact with administration officials.
Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, attended reconciliation meetings with GOP leaders and rank-and-file Republicans in the speaker’s office this week, according to two people familiar with the conversations. House Republicans view Hassett as supportive of Johnson’s one-bill approach, sharing their concerns that a separate tax package wouldn’t clear the chamber.
Nebraska Republican Don Bacon also expressed uneasiness about the potential level of Medicaid cuts that could hit his district, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election.
“Most of us support work requirements for able-bodied adults with no children, and we should make sure it’s not going to people who don’t qualify,” Bacon said.
“Beyond that, President Trump said he was reluctant to see cuts in Medicaid that will impact the most needy,” he added. “His gut instinct is right here.”
If that wasn’t enough, some on the hard right are still suggesting they want further changes to the budget framework before they support it on the House floor.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) on Thursday said he wanted to pursue alterations to the plan over recess, including securing guarantees about “where the cuts are coming from” in specific committees. Asked if he thought GOP leaders were open to additional changes, Ogles replied, “They don't have the votes, so I think they're compelled to work with us.” He added that things were trending in “the right direction.”
GOP leaders’ decision to include a $4 trillion debt ceiling hike in the budget blueprint is adding a further complication. Lifting the federal borrowing limit is deeply controversial among Republicans, and several GOP members, including Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have never voted to do so.
Other ultraconservative members are finding reasons to be skeptical. Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he doubted a key economic assumption budget writers used to claim that their plan wouldn’t add to the national debt.
GOP leaders assert that enacting the tax cuts and other measures in the bill will result in 2.6 percent average annual GDP growth— well above the current 1.8 percent projection of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“That in and of itself is extremely optimistic," Self said. "I was very concerned when I started hearing people saying, ‘Well, we can just grow our way out of this.’”
“We cannot,” he added.
Brian Faler and Ben Leonard contributed to this report.
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