Troubles loom for Johnson on Trump budget bill
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) notched a significant win Tuesday night when he muscled the House GOP’s budget resolution through the chamber in a stunning — and dramatic — vote, flipping a trio of hard-line conservative holdouts at the last minute to clinch victory.
But that was just the start.
With the “one big, beautiful bill” budget resolution adopted in the House, Johnson is now staring down a series of high-stakes next steps that could make or break the Republican effort to enact President Trump’s legislative agenda — forecasting a stormy stretch ahead for the Speaker.
“We took one necessary step, but there are many miles to go,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote on the social platform X.
First, House Republicans need to reconcile with the Senate GOP conference, which approved its budget resolution last week that utilized a two-track strategy. A number of senators have also laid down demands for major changes to the House-passed resolution, which could complicate the GOP effort to reach a compromise.
Then, Johnson will be tasked with moving that consensus resolution through the House, which could get tricky if substantial changes are made to the measure, as expected.
“As little as possible,” Johnson said when asked how many changes the House will be able to stomach. “We have a very small needle to thread here, and we have sort of an equilibrium point amongst people with competing priorities, and [if] we deviate from that too much, we have a problem.”
And finally, in the heaviest lift of them all, Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and their leadership teams will have to fill out the specific policy details for the bill within the parameters laid out in the budget resolution — forcing top lawmakers into the balancing act of appeasing conservatives pushing for deep spending cuts and policy rollbacks while protecting moderate Republicans who represent key purple districts.
Johnson, for his part, has been clear-eyed about the path ahead, telling reporters Tuesday night after the vote “a lot of work is yet to be done.”
Those efforts are already getting underway.
Thune told reporters on Wednesday “there are some things that we need to work with the House package to expand upon,” with ironing out an agreement on the tax cuts likely topping that agenda.
Thune and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) led a group of Senate Republicans in firing a warning shot earlier this month, announcing that they will only support a package that includes a permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, drawing a line in the sand on one of the thorniest — and most expensive — parts of the legislative push.
The House’s budget resolution, however, puts a $4.5 trillion ceiling on the deficit impact of any GOP plan to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts because many hard-line Republicans demand that the package be deficit-neutral. Key lawmakers, however, have cast doubt that the figure will be enough to cover the cost, unless budgetary gimmicks are used.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), for example, has cited a Congressional Budget Office report that said extending the tax cuts for a decade would cost more than $4.7 trillion.
Crapo on Wednesday said he is already working on “adjustments” to the House’s instructions.
“Now, the work starts over here,” he told reporters. “We’re going to start working on what we need to do. Now that we know the House numbers on the … cuts that they’ve put in their instructions, and now that we know where they are … on the baseline, we’ll start working on our adjustments.”
Johnson and Thune met with Trump and some members of his economic team at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the path forward for reconciliation, after which the Speaker reported “lots of progress.” He also said it was the House’s “goal” to make the tax cuts permanent.
“We’re moving along. There is close unity between the House and Senate on the mission and the goals and what we need to achieve over the coming weeks,” Johnson added, later saying: “Everyone is completely aligned on the mission and the goal set and what we’re going to do, so we feel very optimistic about all this.”
Another concern some senators have with the House’s budget resolution is potential cuts to Medicaid, similar to the worries among House moderates. The lower chamber’s measure directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — to find at least $880 billion in cuts, a number that some lawmakers say cannot be reached without significant changes to the social safety net program.
“I’m not going to vote for Medicaid cuts,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, pointing to the high percentage of his constituents who benefit from Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). “It’ll need to be changed. I know there’s a lot of people on our side who want a bunch of changes.”
Trump, to be sure, reiterated on Wednesday that he does not want to “touch” Medicaid beyond rooting out fraud. Johnson has echoed that same message.
Hard-line House Republicans, however, are warning that they will not stomach a spending cut floor below the levels laid out in their budget resolution, which lays out a $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts across committees with a target of $2 trillion.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, when asked if he would accept a lower floor. “If we wanted to have stupid ideas, we would’ve had them written the bill in the first place. That’s why we wrote our bill.”
Some hard-line House Republicans, meanwhile, are already drawing lines in the sand on what policies they want to see in the final bill, a reality that could cause headaches for leadership down the road once they begin crafting the package.
Roy — who played a key role in negotiating a conservative-backed amendment to the House’s budget resolution — said his vote to adopt the measure “was contingent on additional crucial actions” in a final reconciliation bill, including rolling back all the energy subsidies including in the Democrats’ sprawling 2022 health, climate and taxes bill.
That idea, however, is already sparking pushback from some lawmakers whose districts benefit from provisions in the legislation — including members in purple areas and ruby-red territories. Last year, a group of Republicans wrote to Johnson urging him to “prioritize business and market certainty as you consider efforts that repeal or reform the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).”
“I have a great deal of respect for Chip and understand where he’s coming from, but at the same time, you know, let’s don’t cut off our noses in spite of our face,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), a signer of the letter whose district has electric vehicle manufacturing. “Let’s look at these things very carefully and see if they are doing what we want them to do.”
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