CNN
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Senate GOP leaders are expected to soon take a major step toward advancing President Donald Trump’s multi-trillion-dollar agenda in Congress — simultaneously setting off an intraparty war over how to pay for it.
Republicans in Washington are moving urgently to deliver the White House a political win on taxes and border security amid an escalating trade war. But the road ahead will be difficult for Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who have slim majorities in their chambers and will need to settle complex party fights that are already dividing the GOP’s hard-right fiscal hawks and its more establishment wing.
The Senate GOP on Friday evening kicked off a marathon voting session known as a “vote-a-rama” on a new budget blueprint that will allow top Republicans to begin drafting Trump’s first big legislative package. That process is expected to last through early Saturday morning as Democrats plan to force hundreds of votes to hammer the GOP on an array of political weak spots, including tariffs and the proposed GOP spending cuts that could impose major slashes to programs like Medicaid, which now provides health services to more than 72 million Americans.
But Thune’s plans — which include trillions of dollars in permanent tax breaks and new money for national security, with only nominal spending cuts — will, once approved, have to survive the much more conservative GOP-led House. Both chambers must agree to the same budget blueprint to unlock the next step toward Trump’s bill, using special filibuster-proof powers known as budget reconciliation.
A half-dozen House GOP lawmakers and senior aides told CNN on Friday they remain skeptical that the Senate’s plan can survive their chamber, where hardline conservatives are seeking at least $1.5 trillion in cuts, compared to the Senate’s objective of $4 billion. Johnson has said he plans to bring the Senate proposal to the House floor next week.
“I worry that it’s going to hurt momentum and you’re gonna have people over here, especially the fiscal hawks, they’re going to say, this is an unserious exercise. And I think you’re going to see people fall off,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, who steered the House GOP’s own budget plan, said this week.
And Arrington notably declined to say whether he’d support the Senate’s budget blueprint: “There’s a lot that hinges on the success of the reconciliation bill, but it starts with a fiscal framework that’s responsible.”
The size of the spending cuts carries particular weight to House conservatives given that Trump also hopes to use the package to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. If GOP leaders don’t act in this bill, Trump will be forced to work with Democrats to do so and possibly have to make concessions to win their support.
The Senate’s blueprint itself offers little detail about what Trump’s bill will ultimately look like. Since it is a mostly procedural step, it does not resolve any of the big policy questions, such as what the tax cuts would look like, which programs’ funding would be cut or how the money for the border would be spent.
But those questions will need to be resolved this spring and summer. GOP leaders are racing to pass the full Trump package by August recess.
The drama over spending cuts has been looming since even before the election. In speeches from the campaign trail, Trump was clear he wanted huge tax breaks and substantial increases for national security.
But Trump also took office in January with an emboldened fiscal hawk wing in Congress, particularly in the House, who have been furious at years of pandemic-fueled spending increases under the Biden administration.
Those ultraconservatives, including those in the House Freedom Caucus, have said they’d rather see Congress pass nothing than something that adds to the deficit.
South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, who sits on the House Budget Committee, recently called the House’s $1.5 trillion cuts “non-negotiable.”
When asked whether he’d be willing to tank Trump’s agenda over the issue, Norman didn’t hesitate: “Me, I’d say, you do that, then I’m a no vote and we’ll take the consequences.”
