'Ready to govern': Five takeaways from the House GOP retreat at Trump's resort in Miami
DORAL, Fla. – The napkins feature the Trump family crest. There's a ballroom named after Ivanka. And the $29 burgers are branded with one word charred onto the bun: TRUMP.
It's the Trump National Doral Miami, the resort where House Republicans met over three days this week to plan how they would squeeze President Donald Trump's agenda through one of the smallest legislative margins in modern American history.
As they await replacements for three departed GOP members, Republicans will control the chamber 217 to 215 for much of the spring, a critical period in which lawmakers hope to put Trump's priorities swiftly into law. With that margin of Republicans to Democrats, the GOP can't lose a single vote and still pass its package. When the seats for former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz of Florida and soon-to-be United Nations Ambassador Elise Stefanik of New York are filled, they'll still only have 220 members to the Democrats' 215.
Many House members think the only feasible option is "one big, beautiful bill," as Trump calls it, that would encompass his border, energy and tax policies in a massive package that can bypass the Senate's 60-vote threshold using a procedural tool known as "reconciliation."
House Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republicans spent the week attempting to find a path forward – and working to get their fellow members energized about walking this political tightrope together.
Here's what you need to know about their three days in Miami.
Republicans feel the pressure
As GOP lawmakers came together Monday night to listen to Trump's speech, they were greeted by a video montage of themselves interspersed with football clips and overlaid with former University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler's famous speech, "the Team," which stresses the importance of working together at all costs.
It was the beginning of three days of the same message from Johnson and other Republican leaders: Get on board, please.
GOP leaders repeatedly hammered into lawmakers the importance of sticking together to deliver on Trump's campaign promises. Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., the No. 4-ranking Republican, framed that clearly as she introduced Trump Monday night: "We are ready to govern."
There's pressure on leadership from their members, as well.
Several of the House's most conservative members have criticized Johnson's leadership. Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., told Paste BN that Johnson has "done a good job up until now," but noted, "I think this is going to be the test as to whether or not he can deliver a bill rapidly."
Missing members plant red flags
The leaders' message was undercut by the roughly 50 missing members who didn't attend the retreat. Among those were some of the ultraconservative members who have defied Johnson's directives in the past.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, posted on X that he was skipping the "so-called Republican retreat."
"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," he wrote.
He added in a separate post that GOP leadership is "working to jam through massive deficits & criticize the Freedom Caucus while protecting GOP members who won’t vote to fully cut the green new deal, won’t reform Medicaid, want to water down border security, and want to subsidize high-tax blue states."
A list of expensive priorities
Trump spoke to members Monday night as they kicked off the retreat in which one of the big goals is to hash out potential ways to pay for the long list of policies they want to enact.
During his speech, Trump added to that list. Among his demands were eliminating taxes on tips, banning taxes on overtime and cutting the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% – priorities that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
That's a particular challenge when there is a portion of the Republican conference that says they'll only support the package if it cuts as much money as it spends.
“One of the things that we have to confront is that it’s easy to talk in platitudes" about cutting federal spending, said Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., vice chair of the GOP's Main Street Caucus.
"It's a very different thing to sit at a board table at the whip's office and put up on a projector what a $23 billion cut looks to this specific nutrition program or to this specific federal student aid program," he said. “The reality is that we are going to have to make some cuts that will be felt by the American people.”
Trump's spending pause dominates the day
Tuesday was lawmakers' big working day as they huddled in breakout sessions with GOP leaders and committee chairs to hear about proposed policies and air their priorities and concerns.
But one story dominated the news cycle outside the room: Trump's Monday night directive to pause the distribution of trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, which he rescinded on Wednesday.
The move set off a firestorm from Democrats and good government advocates, who argued the move violated the Constitution and a federal law barring the president from refusing to spend money Congress allocates.
House Republicans backed up the president's move, arguing it was necessary to avoid waste and abuse.
Trump’s move to pause all federal grants and loans is a “legitimate exercise of executive oversight,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who is often considered an institutionalist who has insisted upon the importance of Congressional power. “I don’t think putting a hold on things is extraordinary.”
An aggressive path forward
Republicans say they made progress over the week by working out some initial goals for spending limits and ensuring concerns and desires from across the conference were heard by committee chairs as they began deliberation. Lawmakers plan to return to Congress next week and begin to work on the first procedural move to set up the legislation they'll need to pass Trump's agenda.
They say they can finish the process, passing the bill into law, by April – an incredibly tight timeframe.
"We have a very aggressive timetable on which we have to operate because the first 100 days will evaporate pretty quickly," Johnson said. "We have to build consensus along the way, and that's what we're doing."
The Budget Committee will have marching orders by the end of the week and put them into action next week, he said, and the Senate will follow the same process on its side. Lawmakers say they will reconcile differences in the bills in February. Then, in March, additional committees will work on the policy in the legislation, with a full House vote by early April, Johnson said.
"If we stay on our schedule, we're sending it to the president's desk by the end of April or early to mid-May," he said.
But as they departed, many lawmakers complained that they were leaving the week without a clear idea of what the legislation will look like or how it will get passed.
"After two days at our House Republican winter retreat, we still do not have a plan on budget reconciliation and our Speaker and his team have not offered one," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X.