House GOP leaders are pleading with their counterparts in the Senate not to make any changes to the massive reconciliation package that eked its way through the lower chamber last week, warning any edits could tank the megabill before it even makes it to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Meanwhile, Trump is telling the Senate to “make the changes they want” — sending mixed messages as Republicans consider edits to the budget framework advancing policies on border, energy, national defense and tax reform.
The contradictory messaging could place the party on a collision course as they scramble to pass the legislation before the Fourth of July.
“I want the Senate and the senators to make the changes they want, and we’ll go back to the House and we’ll see if we can get them,” Trump told reporters this weekend. “In some cases, those changes are maybe something I’d agree with. … Some will be minor and some will be fairly significant.”
The House narrowly passed the budget resolution in a 215-214 vote on Thursday after months of negotiations and last-minute deals to unite competing GOP factions.
However, the very agreements that were made to get holdout lawmakers in the House on board could be what threatens its future in the Senate, as some moderate Republicans warn against deep cuts to programs such as Medicaid or green energy tax credits.
Meanwhile, some Senate Republicans want even deeper spending cuts than those in the House budget, arguing the current framework doesn’t go far enough to reduce the nation’s deficit. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, for one, has been vocal that the bill doesn’t adequately reduce the nation’s debt.
House and Senate could battle over debt ceiling increase
Another provision that could find itself on the chopping block: a debt ceiling increase.
The debt limit is the total amount of money the federal government is authorized to borrow in order to pay off existing obligations, tax refunds, interest on the national debt and other payments, according to the Treasury Department.
House Republicans tucked a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase into the budget resolution to avoid a default later this summer, arguing that by doing so, they would strip Democrats of the chance to use the impending deadline as leverage to attach some of their own policies. However, some Republicans are staunchly opposed to a debt limit increase in any fashion.
“I think the problem for conservatives is they lose their high moral ground. These will be their deficits,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is currently opposed to the package. “These will be GOP spending bills, GOP deficits, and there is no change in the direction of the country.”
It’s not yet clear if the Senate will hold hearings to mark up the budget as the House did last month — but some Republicans are making clear that changes are on the way.
“I’m hoping now we’ll actually start looking at reality,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said last week. “I know everybody wants to go to Disney World, but we just can’t afford it.”
But House leaders are imploring their Senate counterparts not to alter the text, warning changes may not make it back through the lower chamber, where internal disagreements nearly tanked the package in the first place.
“I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. And it’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
Some of the hard-to-convince lawmakers hope their stubbornness will ward off any of their Senate colleagues from making drastic changes, noting the drawn-out process in the House should deter them from doing so.
“I think after seeing how painful of a process this is and how difficult it is to get anything through this side, I think that will send a strong message in the Senate that you can’t really change it,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a member of the Freedom Caucus, told the Deseret News last week.