Big spending, big cuts: House Republicans scramble to strike a deal on Trump's agenda
WASHINGTON − The rush is on.
The House and Senate are both plowing ahead with differing visions for passing President Donald Trump's agenda on Capitol Hill, which will include big spending on border security and defense, along with likely big cuts to programs like Medicaid and food assistance.
For weeks, both sides have been lobbying Trump in meeting rooms from the Capitol to the White House, at Mar-a-Lago, and on the sidelines of the Super Bowl in an attempt to convince him they know the best way to squeeze his priorities through one of the narrowest congressional majorities in modern history.
Trump has said he doesn't care how it happens, as long as his priorities on border, defense, energy and taxation get passed. That's left Congress members to fend for themselves as they fight to offer a plan that will work.
On Wednesday, House Republicans released their long-awaited proposal that would implement around $4.5 trillion in tax cuts offset with $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending reductions, which will come in part from cutting health care and food aid for low-income Americans. It would raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years, put tens of billions of dollars into border security and defense, and add almost $3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
But its prospects in the narrowly divided chamber are unclear: Fiscal conservatives plan to haggle for deeper cuts, despite leadership offering them an incentive to bring them on board.
Meanwhile, the Senate moved forward this week on its own plan to send $150 billion to national defense and $175 billion on border security after Trump's border czar Tom Homan and budget director Russell Vought asked them during lunch on Tuesday to urgently fund Trump's immigration policies.
Both the House and the Senate will eventually have to agree on the same plan to pass Trump's agenda.
Here's what to know about the future of Trump's priorities on Capitol Hill.
A gauntlet in the House
After the 2024 elections, Republicans have total control of Washington. But lawmakers know they may not have long to deliver. Regardless of which party holds power, a trifecta usually lasts only two years.
In the House, Republicans' five-person majority is already one of the smallest margins of power in modern history.
But the reality is even tighter. House Republicans already have two vacancies, created by the departures of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who resigned at the end of last year, and former Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., who joined the Trump administration as national security advisor. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., will also soon resign when she is confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations.
That would leave a 217-215 majority for a few months, meaning House Republicans can't lose a single vote and still pass bills, giving each GOP member immense leverage to demand what they want.
House leaders have argued the only way to pass Trump's priorities through that tiny margin is to roll everything into one "big, beautiful bill," as Trump has dubbed it, to get every Republican on board.
In the Senate, Republicans control the chamber 53-47 – a comfortable margin for simple-majority votes to approve Cabinet nominees, but not enough to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to get around the filibuster for most legislation.
To avoid that, Republicans will use a process called "reconciliation," which allows lawmakers to bypass the filibuster, which would otherwise require compromise with Democrats. Former President Joe Biden also used the strategy when passing his agenda through the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan. Reconciliation bills can include only measures related to spending.
A plan to entice conservatives, cut benefits
After weeks of negotiations, House Republicans finally released their budget blueprint for Trump's agenda Wednesday morning.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, the ultraconservative wing of the conference, had been pushing leadership to propose deeper cuts to offset the immense cost of Trump's proposed tax cuts.
What House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and other leaders proposed would implement $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, along with $100 billion in money for defense. It would also include $90 billion for the Homeland Security Committee to allocate and $110 billion for the Judiciary Committee to spend, both of which would go toward Trump's border security priorities.
It also directs multiple committees to cut billions of dollars, including $880 billion in cuts spearheaded by the Energy and Commerce Committee. Because Trump has ruled out cuts to Medicare and Social Security, that likely means deep cuts to Medicaid, which provides health coverage to 72 million low-income people. Still, Johnson said Tuesday that Medicaid is not "on the chopping block."
"If you eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid, you’ve got a huge amount of money that you can spend on real priorities for the country," he told reporters.
The plan also directed the Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion in savings, which would likely mean paring back food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. These changes may undermine support from moderate Republicans.
But the plan also includes a bonus to get conservatives to support the proposal: It sets a goal of $2 trillion in spending cuts and a minimum of $1.5 trillion. And if Republicans can't reach the goal of $2 trillion, they have to pare back their tax cuts by $500 billion, reducing the overall cost of the package, which has been a concern for fiscal conservatives.
House conservatives aren't convinced
The plan was immediately met with skepticism from the House's most conservative members, who demanded further cuts in order to garner their support.
"I'm really disappointed," House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Paste BN. He said he's urging Arrington to require $2.5 trillion in cuts, which he said would be the minimum needed "just to accommodate for the growth in interest payments" on the national debt.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a conservative hardliner who sits on the Budget Committee that will have the first crack at considering the proposal on Thursday, said he wants the minimum cuts bumped up to $2 trillion, rather than keeping it simply as a goal.
In order to meet that level of savings, conservatives want to add limits on federal Medicaid support for states and implement work requirements on the program. They have also proposed expanding work requirements for SNAP and revoking tax credits implemented under Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump wants the tax proposal to include no taxes on tips, as he repeatedly called for on the campaign trail, no taxes on Social Security benefits, and no taxes on overtime pay. He also wants to extend the tax changes implemented during his first term, adjust certain tax deductions that mostly affect residents in higher-tax states like New York and California, and close the "carried interest loophole," which allows investment managers to lower their taxable income.
Norman noted Trump doesn't want those proposals "watered down" to save money. So "the only way you're going to cure our problem is cuts," he said. "Everybody's got an interest in one way or another, and we've got to settle that."
The Senate pushes ahead on its own
While House Republicans haggle among themselves, Senate Republicans on Wednesday kicked off the process of considering their own proposal that would focus on border and defense while later tackling taxes, the most expensive proposal Republicans are considering.
Homan and Vought met with Senate Republicans on Tuesday. They were "begging" senators for money to support Trump's border plans, Graham told reporters.
"To my Republican colleagues in the House: I'm pulling for one big, beautiful bill. But there's a sense of urgency,” Graham said as his committee started its meeting Wednesday to approve their plan. “I hope you will consider what we do if you cannot produce the one big, beautiful bill quickly."