Trump demands for legislative agenda squeeze House GOP

DORAL, Fla. — Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is staring out at a minefield as he looks to pass a sprawling tax and immigration package that pleases all corners of the ideologically diverse Republican Party, a thorny task made even tougher after President Trump laid out a lofty set of demands for the legislation.

During the House GOP retreat at Trump National Doral on Monday, the president said he wants the bill to complete construction of the border wall, appropriate funding for “a record increase” in border security personnel and retention bonuses for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, invest in deportation flights and aircraft, and eliminate taxes on tips, social security and overtime.

The wish list represents many of Trump’s top campaign promises. But in laying out those priorities this week, Trump is putting Johnson in a bind as he looks to satisfy the White House, appease hard-line conservatives and keep moderates on board, all while navigating the House GOP’s slim majority.

Johnson, for his part, is exuding confidence, telling The Hill’s Emily Brooks during a wide-ranging fireside chat at the retreat that "all this is possible."

“We’re working out the sequencing of the plays, as you’ve all heard me make football metaphors many times," he said. "The analogy is that we’ve been working on a playbook for almost a year.”

“We got all the ingredients together, we drew up the plays, and now we’re working on the sequencing,” he added. “And how all of that works together is very important. We are the team that is deeply concerned about the nation’s debt and the deficit. And I’m a fiscal conservative, a lifelong fiscal hawk myself, and so that is something I think we have a responsibility to guard against, while at the same time accomplishing all these things that are needed for the people. We gotta fix everything and we will.”

Still, Republicans say it will be tough to execute on the agenda while meeting members’ expectations for the legislation.

“It's ultimately a math problem,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the influential Main Street Caucus. “Between the Senate, House and the White House, there's a large list of wants. Not everyone is going to make it in the front package, and now we're in the winnowing process.”

House Republicans are gathering at Trump’s property in Doral for three days this week as the conference plots plans to advance the president’s agenda using a maneuver that requires only GOP buy-in, avert a government shutdown next month and raise the debt limit sometime this summer — a trio of heavy lifts that will require near unanimity in the fractious conference that has no room to spare.

Logistically, keeping the group together throughout those legislative efforts will be the tallest hurdle of them all. Republicans have been legislating with a single-digit vote margin this year. And when Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) resigns from office to join the Trump administration in the coming weeks, the GOP will have a zero-vote edge.

Policy-wise, GOP leaders must figure out how to cram Trump’s extensive wish list — tax cuts, border funding and energy policy — into one bill, with lawmakers at odds over how to craft those policies, and some hard-line conservatives demanding the entire package be deficit-neutral.

Those dynamics came into clear focus this week when Trump reiterated his demands for the legislation.

“Whether it's one bill, two bills, I don't care. Let these guys, they're going to work it out. They're going to work it out one way or the other,” Trump said, alluding to the debate between the House and Senate over whether to move one bill or two through the reconciliation process.

House GOP leaders have said they are moving ahead with a single package, planning to tee up the legislative vehicle for the Trump agenda by the end of February, while top Senate Republicans have been pushing for a pair of measures.

“But the bottom line, the end result is going to be the same,” Trump added. “We want to have all of those benefits and we want to keep people's taxes low and actually make them lower.”

On the deficit-neutrality front, the price tag of the GOP’s package is rising as Trump adds more priorities to the effort. Doing away with tax on tips, for example, would cost $106 billion over 10 years, and banning overtime taxes would cost $750 billion over the next decade, according to estimates prepared by Republicans on the House Budget Committee.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) — a hard-line conservative who skipped this week’s retreat — has said he will not support a reconciliation package unless it is deficit-neutral, calling that his “red line” and thereby backing Johnson into a corner as he looks to appease Trump and Roy.

Some are questioning if that is even possible.

“Clearly it’s an ambitious effort,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters in Florida on Tuesday. “2017 was an ambitious effort, it’s an even more ambitious timeline given the amount of what they’ve got to do.”

Cole, who has sat on the powerful Appropriations Committee since 2009, said cuts to discretionary programs alone will not be able to cover the costs of the reconciliation process, meaning Republicans could look to programs like Medicare and Medicaid to boost “savings.” Congressional rules prohibit lawmakers from making changes to Social Security benefits in the reconciliation process, which Trump has promised to not change anyway.

Cole likened the amount of discretionary cuts available to a small drop in the bucket.

“It’s like trying to balance your household budget with the change you find in the couch,” Cole said. “Good luck, it’s good, get the money, but it’s not gonna make much of a dent in what you spend in a month.”

Republicans could turn to accounting measures beyond explicit cuts to cover the cost of the bill, with GOP lawmakers saying they could seek “savings” that could be calculated in other ways.

Beyond the price tag, Republicans are staring down a series of disagreements when it comes to crafting the legislative details of the package, including, notably, what to do about the deduction cap for state and local taxes (SALT), which Trump has said he wants to raise and many Republicans from high-tax blue states are demanding be addressed.

Republicans in New York, particularly, are demanding a significant increase in the deduction cap — which was first put in place as part of the 2017 Trump tax bill — warning that they will not support the ultimate package unless their constituents receive tax relief.

“I don’t see how you get a bill passed that extends the cap at $10,000, or even just doubles it to $20,000,” Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) said last week. “I don’t see how you get there.”

Throughout those policy conversations, Republican leaders will have to grapple with keeping the House GOP conference united, a challenge that was on full display during this week’s retreat.

Roughly 50 of the sitting 218 House Republicans skipped the South Florida gathering, a not-insignificant number when GOP leaders were touting the importance of the group getting on the same page. Among the no-shows was Roy, a deficit hawk and frequent leadership critic who took a swipe at the GOP lawmakers who attended the retreat.

“It is being reported I am not at the so-called Republican retreat in Florida. I am not. I am in Texas, with my family & meeting with constituents, rather than spending $2K to hear more excuses for increasing deficits & not being in DC to deliver Trump’s border security $ ASAP,” Roy wrote on the social platform X.

In a sign of those tensions, Vice President Vance, while speaking to House GOP lawmakers during the retreat on Tuesday, said there were no disagreements in the room, prompting laughs from members, according to a source in the room. At another point, Vance urged the Republicans to "be good to one another” and "try to have the open dialogue,” a second source in the room told The Hill.

Trump echoed that sentiment in comments to the conference the day before, telling the group “the Republican Party has to stick together.”

“Everything is so hard,” he added. “We always have two or three or five or something, people that just don't want to do it and you just got to do it. You just got to do it, make life easy, just got to do it.”

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