WASHINGTON — House and Senate Republicans have voted to approve competing budget measures to pass portions of President Donald Trump’s agenda. And top GOP lawmakers insisted Wednesday they won’t accept the other chamber’s version.
Under the arcane process that Republicans are using, both the House and the Senate must approve the same budget resolution before they can formally craft a massive party-line bill that can evade the Senate filibuster and cut Democrats out of the process.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told GOP senators at a closed-door lunch meeting Wednesday that the House budget resolution approved Tuesday cannot pass the Senate in its current form, a source with knowledge of his comments told NBC News.
That’s a shared opinion among Senate Republicans, who spent the day pouring cold water over the House’s blueprint, which contains $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, a $4 trillion debt limit increase, hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on immigration enforcement and the military, and spending cuts to offset some of the red ink.
“Short answer is likely no. Long answer is, hell no,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said when asked if the Senate should take up the House’s budget plan unchanged.
Trump met with Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., at the White House on Wednesday, along with the leaders of the tax-writing committees, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. Johnson called it a “great meeting” and teased a potential announcement from Trump, which he said he anticipates Thursday.
When asked how much change the House can stomach to its budget, Johnson replied, “As little as possible.”
“I’ve articulated that over and over, because, as demonstrated last night, we have a very small needle to thread here,” Johnson told reporters after the White House meeting, pointing to the narrow Republican majority. “And we have sort of an equilibrium point amongst people with competing priorities. And we deviate from that too much, we have a problem. So the Senate understands that.”
Senate Republicans have a 53-47 majority, while House Republicans have an even narrower 218-215 margin. The House voted 217-215 to adopt their budget resolution after wrangling some GOP holdouts, one week after the Senate approved their version 52-48.
Thune, meanwhile, said the White House meeting included “good conversations” about what comes next, without offering specifics. The Senate’s budget blueprint tackles immigration, military funding and energy policy, while leaving taxes and the debt limit for another time.
“We haven’t had a chance since the House passed their bill to sit down with our conference, which we will do soon, and talk about some of those decision points,” Thune said. He added that there are “certainly advantages” of the House’s one-bill approach, “but no final decisions have been made.”
Democrats have sought to make the GOP pay a political price for the House’s budget plan, zeroing in on some $880 billion in spending cuts required by the Energy and Commerce Committee. Republicans say Medicaid cuts will be part of how they reach that target.
“Last night, almost every single House Republican signed their names to what would be the largest Medicaid cuts in American history,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday. “Why did Republicans do it? So they could cut taxes for the billionaire’s club. The Republican agenda is quickly taking shape: Under Donald Trump’s Republican Party, billionaires win, American families lose.”
Passing a larger budget bill will be a monumental challenge, particularly in the House. GOP leaders were able to persuade conservative holdouts to support the budget resolution with promises of significant spending cuts, while center-right Republicans in swing districts voted for it while making clear they’re leery of cutting too deeply into popular programs like Medicaid.
Johnson and Thune both acknowledged that they may first have to deal with a March 14 deadline to prevent a government shutdown, which would occur through a different process than the budget resolution and require Democratic support.
Another difficulty for Republicans in the budget resolution is how to make the tax cuts enacted in 2017 permanent before they expire at the end of this year, which would cost an estimated $4.7 trillion over a decade. That traditionally requires paying for them, which the GOP has no realistic hope of doing. So, the party is instead exploring ways to bypass that requirement, potentially by changing the budget “baseline,” which would represent a major departure from the way reconciliation historically works.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump wrote on social media, “I hope the House and Senate are able to agree on making the Tax Cuts PERMANENT!”
