Republicans withholding support for President Donald Trump’s trademark legislation over spending concerns repeatedly praised spending cut levels Trump’s bill achieves and surpasses.
Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” — the master marketer’s name for the budget reconciliation bill — includes a staggering $1.6 billion in mandatory spending cuts, which Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, a close ally of many of the holdouts, called “historic.”
A group of Republicans is slowing the bill’s advancement to fight for yet further spending reforms, despite earlier in negotiations calling for spending cut levels falling short of the budget reconciliation bill’s $1.6 trillion.
Four of those Republicans, all in the House Freedom Caucus, joined Democrats Friday to stymy the bill’s advancement from the House Budget Committee, leading to more negotiations, which delayed the bill’s advancement until late Sunday night.
Those four — Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), and Andrew Clyde (R-GA) — voted “present” Sunday to allow the bill to advance as a sign of good faith in ongoing negotiations led by the Trump White House.
Despite their new calls to delay the bill and seek further cuts, all four of those members as well as the House Freedom Caucus praised the instructions to find $1.5 billion in spending cuts in the budget resolution — a first, necessary step that sets the framework for a budget reconciliation bill — when it passed on April 10.
The House Freedom Caucus, whose members unanimously supported the budget resolution in April, called for a $1.5 trillion spending reduction — a target the One Big, Beautiful Bill exceeds.
In its statement praising the budget resolution, the caucus specifically praised what it called “the $1.5 trillion spending reduction floor” in the resolution. They also praised Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) commitment “to ensuring the final bill will provide enough spending reduction so that tax cuts will be fully offset.”
“Thank you to President Trump, Speaker Johnson, and [Senate Majority] Leader [John] Thune (R-SD) for your leadership in making this commitment to ensuring a fiscally responsible reconciliation bill,” the statement read.
Statements from individual caucus members are consistent with that statement.
Prominent holdout Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) praised the budget resolution after its passage, singling out Johnson’s “specific commitment to guarantee the House framework tying tax cuts to spending cuts,” which was retained in the budget reconciliation bill advanced out of the Budget Committee Sunday.
“This was a non-negotiable deal-breaker — and will be for the final product,” Roy’s April 10 statement read. “In keeping with the House budget resolution, the commitment would mean we start with a base assumption of $2.5 Trillion in economic growth and then $1 for $1 tax cuts to spending cuts above that number — such that when we achieve $1.4 Trillion in cuts, we will achieve the number necessary” to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire at the end of 2026, permanent.
Norman thanked Thune and Johnson upon the resolution’s passage “for publicly committing to seeking $1.5 trillion in cuts, which is critical to rein in reckless spending in Washington.”
In an April 9 post, he ridiculed the meager $4 billion cuts in a previously passed Senate version “compared to the House’s baseline of $1.5 TRILLION,” instructing the Senate to “get serious!!”
Clyde similarly said, “now is the time to get SERIOUS,” when touting “[t]he House’s budget resolution cuts a MINIMUM of $1.5 TRILLION over ten years” in an April 9 post, echoing a February post.
In a February Newsmax appearance, Clyde jubilantly proclaimed, “this particular resolution will allow us to cut at a baseline, a floor, $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.”
Brecheen also praised the budget resolution for its commitment “to reduce spending by at least $1.5 trillion” and touted the resolution’s passage.
In a May 1 post, he said, “It’s crucial that we maintain the @housebudgetgop’s blueprint throughout reconciliation. This would ensure that we cut at least $1.5 trillion in federal spending while also finding areas of savings so we can finish the wall and extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”
Multiple other House Freedom Caucus members have praised the $1.5 trillion mark in spending cuts later surpassed by the budget reconciliation bill’s $1.6 trillion in mandatory reductions, including Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Andy Ogles (R-TN), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ).
Perhaps the major sticking point for holdouts is when some of those spending cuts and reforms kick in. As Breitbart News reported, among the group’s concerns were “that many of the reforms in the legislation were postponed for years and would likely be eliminated in future legislation before taking effect.” For example, work requirements to prevent able-bodied Medicaid recipients from accessing the system do not kick in until 2029 — after Trump’s administration. The four holdouts and many in the House Freedom Caucus (as well as other Republicans) would prefer that and other new requirements and phaseouts take place sooner.
But those stipulations were inserted to mollify other factions of the diverse House Republican Conference, notably the moderates who are hesitant to back a bill with such drastic — if necessary — immediate cuts.
Spending is far from the only consideration at play for getting the bill passed in the House by Johnson’s Memorial Day goal — if at all.
The White House is working to strike the right balance on multiple other issues, most notably its complicated tax provisions, including a fight over the cap on State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions. Changes too far in any one area of the bill could dissolve its tenuous support and doom the bill’s fate in a House with only a small Republican majority.
Trump himself will visit the Capitol Monday morning to meet with the House Republican Conference, a move demonstrating his seriousness in ending negotiations and moving the bill as soon as possible.
The president is likely to make crystal clear that the reconciliation bill complies with and surpasses the budget resolution’s spending cut requirements previously raised by now-holdout members as conditional for their support.
With Trump dealing with ending the European war, securing almost countless bilateral trade deal, and fighting both Democrats and activist judges, his message to holdouts desiring to prolong negotiations might simply be “take the win.”
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
Read the full article here