House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington says Republicans shouldn’t give up on advancing certain priorities that were cut out of their “big, beautiful bill” for not complying with Senate rules, telling reporters Tuesday that lawmakers will try again in follow-up budget reconciliation packages.
“There may be a longer list of things that were kicked out by the Senate parliamentarian as non-compliant with the Byrd rule — I think we should make another run at that and look for ways to structure the provisions so that it’s more fundamentally budgetary in impact and policy,” the Texas Republican said during the press call Tuesday afternoon. “I suspect that’s why they were kicked out.”
The so-called Byrd rule limits what provisions can be included in a bill moving through Congress through the reconciliation process, which allows lawmakers to skirt the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. Arrington specifically pointed to one provision stripped in the Senate from the House-passed megabill that would have prohibited Medicaid coverage for gender affirming surgeries, and another that would have banned noncitizens from tapping into Medicaid resources.
“I think those — we need to spend more time” crafting the provisions to pass muster with the parliamentarian, Arrington said. “I don’t think we spent enough time to look for a pathway to success on them, and that’s sort of the landscape, as I see it, of the opportunities in another reconciliation bill.”
Echoing Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent comments, Arrington said he suspects GOP leaders will attempt to do two more party-line packages in the 119th Congress, with the next one slated for the fall.
Arrington added members would likely demand that those additional measures be drafted under circumstances where both chambers adhere to the same budget framework, avoiding a repeat of the most recent scenario where House and Senate Republicans each gave their committees different deficit reduction targets.
He lamented the fact that the Senate did not comply with the House’s aggressive instructions for writing iits version of the megabill, but credited fiscal hawks for helping secure $1.5 trillion in savings in a final product, and noted that it was not “feasible” to expect the full magnitude of cost savings would be acheived in a single reconciliation bill — “politically, at least.”
As it currently stands, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law over the weekend, is “front loaded with costs and back-end loaded with savings,” which Arrington said should compel Republicans to make sure the administration follows through in “mak[ing] sure the savings actually happen.”
“That was a concern among conservative budget hawks,” Arrington said. “When I think about the Budget Committee’s role going forward, one of the things that we need to do … is keep the pressure on the Senate, on the House and the administration to be diligent in implementation and enforcement.”
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