Trump wants one 'powerful' MAGA bill. Republicans are too dysfunctional to pass it. | Opinion
Trump met in private with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol. What he said before and after that meeting showed the president-elect doesn't have a viable plan or an agreement with his allies yet.
Donald Trump, the former president scheduled to be sworn into that office again in eight days, has expansive ambitions for swift and sweeping legislation – and precariously narrow Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress.
Trump and congressional Republicans seek to circumnavigate a filibuster in the Senate, which Democrats could try to deploy to stymie his aspirations. But the best option for Democrats could be just relying on continuing Republican dysfunctional infighting.
Trump met in private Wednesday evening with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol. What he said before and after that meeting showed the president-elect doesn't have a viable plan or an agreement with his allies just yet.
He started the week vowing to produce "one powerful Bill" covering increased border security, renewing tax cuts for the wealthy he signed into law during his first term, and increasing domestic oil production. That bill would also include an increase in the limit on how much the government can borrow to pay its debts, spending cuts and many other initiatives.
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who holds his position under constant threat of hard-right Republican revolt, want to do all that with one enormous piece of legislation. Republican leaders in the Senate see trouble ahead and want to break that up into two packages.
“We’ll get something done," Trump said after his Senate meeting Wednesday. "One bill, two bills, doesn’t matter to me. They’re going to work that out."
Trump wants a congressional loophole to get his agenda through
That's Trump talking about Republicans running before they learn to walk.
He and his allies want to use a parliamentary procedure called "budget reconciliation" that would allow them to pass wish-list-laden legislation on a simple majority vote, defusing the Democratic option of a filibuster, which requires 60 of 100 votes in that chamber to overcome.
One big problem there – the House and Senate first have to agree on a budget resolution, a blueprint on spending for a fiscal year, that includes instructions for a reconciliation plan.
There is no budget resolution for this federal fiscal year, which started three months ago and runs until Sept. 30. A resolution like that hasn't passed since August 2021, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate.
Johnson just took plenty of heat from the right wing of his caucus last month – with a threat of a government shutdown – because he tried to follow Trump's lead before backing down and relying on Democrats to help pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government until March 14 at levels set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act in May 2023.
That sort of Republican budget drama is a constant threat to Johnson's speakership. Trump wants them to run before they walk, but what if the hard-right Republicans slow it all to a crawl? Just increasing the amount of borrowing to pay existing bills, known as raising the debt ceiling, usually enrages them.
When it comes time, what will Republicans propose cutting?
This plan, when and if it finally goes public, will stir strong sentiment among others, too, prompting questions about what programs get funding reduced or eliminated to keep his tax cuts alive, which could cost more than $4 trillion over 10 years.
William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former top Senate Republican budget staffer, told me the proposed cuts being circulated include some "pretty controversial stuff," programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
That comes as Johnson and Trump claim they won't touch entitlement programs.
Trump's newly appointed government cost-cutters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, were reportedly considering cuts to Medicare and Medicaid last month. Ramaswamy said talk of trimming those programs was premature but nodded toward that possibility while trying to assure Americans that the moves would not amount to wholesale cuts.
"You can't come up with offsets for a $4 trillion extension of the tax cuts with help getting into those kinds of provisions," Hoagland said.
Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as a senior adviser in the Office of Management and Budget during President Barack Obama's first term, put an even finer point on that.
“Reporting shows that their plans are to make tax cuts for rich people and pay for them by cutting middle-class people and poor people, denying them their Medicaid, denying them their food stamps,” Kogan told me.
That's a bumpy road ahead for public perception. And there are procedural problems looming, too.
Republicans don't have much wiggle room to get things done
Budget reconciliation is often used for narrow purposes. Trump and his congressional allies tried to use the process but failed during his first term to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But then they used the process later that year to pass his tax cuts.
President Joe Biden used it during his one term to pass the American Rescue Act and Inflation Reduction Act.
A budgetary provision known as "The Byrd Rule," named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., allows for a challenge in the Senate of provisions in a reconciliation plan that don't directly impact taxes, spending or reductions in funding.
Hoagland told me he expects Trump's sweeping legislation, touching on so many policies, will trigger that rule.
"This is supposed to be a budget process, not doing grandiose policy," Hoagland said. "I think there will be clear violations."
Trump's last big win with reconciliation, his tax cuts signed into law in December 2017, came with the support of 224 Republicans in the House, with a dozen Republicans and 189 Democrats opposed.
The former and future president and his Republican allies no longer have that advantage.
"When you do these big, wonderful, beautiful, magic bills, you can't underestimate the margin," Hoagland said. "They don't have that margin now."
Democrats are not going to get bipartisanship here, so they must count on Republican dysfunction disrupting the process. That feels like a pretty good bet right now.
Follow Paste BN elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan