Americans are furious about the rising cost of living, and a series of internal battles on Capitol Hill this week is laying bare why Republicans are struggling to do anything about it.
House and Senate Republicans are facing divisions over a gas-tax holiday being demanded by President Donald Trump, not to mention housing and energy permitting bills that have stalled for months.
Meanwhile, a long-term immigration enforcement bill that could be the last major piece of GOP legislation before the midterms has become engulfed by the inclusion of a billion-dollar Secret Service funding request that has put a spotlight on Trump’s controversial White House ballroom project.
The scale of the political challenges facing Republicans were further underscored Tuesday with the administration’s latest cost estimate for the Iran war surpassing $29 billion and a brutal inflation report showing gas, grocery and housing prices surging last month amid the conflict.
“I don’t know that the Congress is doing a whole lot — that’s the real issue,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “My advice to Congress would be, it might be good for us to do something on cost of living. … It seems like voters are making it very clear that they want some relief.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also offered a blunt assessment of the optics the party is facing as they try to approve the Secret Service funding, which can be used for parts of Trump’s ballroom project, as Americans deal with high gas prices
“Not good,” she said.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran met with Senate Republicans Tuesday to make the case for his agency’s staggering request, but several GOP senators said afterward that they aren’t satisfied with the explanations administration officials have so far provided.
Even some senior House Republicans are airing public doubts about the security funding — about $220 million of which could end up being spent as part of the ballroom project, according to a breakdown given to senators and obtained by POLITICO.
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said in an interview Tuesday he did not doubt the need for additional security for Trump and other Secret Service protectees but would “reserve judgment” on the $1 billion request as he seeks an “itemized” list of what it would fund.
“I hope it’s narrowly tailored to getting [immigration enforcement] funded and restoring the safety and security of the American people,” said Arrington, who initially wanted affordability and other measures added to the party-line bill.
Curran’s visit to Capitol Hill Tuesday was part of a White House lobbying blitz for the security funding, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and White House legislative affairs director James Braid making pitches to other groups of Republicans in closed-door meetings Tuesday and Wednesday.
One member granted anonymity to speak candidly said it could get “ugly” with the White House seemingly determined to get it done despite GOP lawmakers’ protests. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a key centrist, said in an interview Tuesday that the $1 billion request was simply “not happening here” in the House.
Republicans believe they’ve already taken some steps to address cost-of-living concerns, including the tax cuts included in last year’s “big, beautiful bill” that they hope Americans are beginning to feel benefits from.
But the ballroom security squabble has handed Democrats something they view as a potent political cudgel heading into November.
“Instead of listening to the American people, Donald Trump and the GOP put forward a reconciliation bill that would force Americans to pay for Trump’s billion-dollar-ballroom and tens of billions of dollars more for Trump’s masked agents while including zero — zero — dollars to bring down Americans’ costs,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
The issue for congressional Republicans is that many of the ideas currently being batted around to address high prices divide their ranks, giving them an unclear path to Trump’s desk.
Senate Republicans pointed to a long-brewing permitting overhaul Tuesday as a way to potentially reduce energy costs — but the proposal has remained just out of reach for years now. And, according to two attendees, GOP senators urged Speaker Mike Johnson to pass their housing bill without changes, believing it could give the party a quick way to show voters they hear their concerns.
“I think it gets at the core issue, the heart of the matter for most voters, which is affordability,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said about the need to pass the housing bill.
The closed-door lunch came after a group of GOP senators met with Trump Monday at the White House, where they discussed the fate of a housing bill that passed the Senate on an 89-10 vote in March. Afterward, Trump went on Truth Social and urged Congress to quickly pass the legislation.
But House Republican leaders are signaling they want to make further changes, which would require it to be passed in the Senate a second time — even though White House officials are strongly pushing back on that idea.
“I’d just be happy if they do something,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday, blaming “one or two” House Republicans for the impasse: “They’ve been holding it up since God was a baby. Their reasons for holding it up run from substantive to ‘my dog ate my homework.’”
Trump, for his part, has made a series of comments that have only fueled accusations that his party isn’t focused enough on affordability.
Asked Tuesday as he left the White House for his overseas trip to China whether Americans’ finances figured into his approach to the Iran conflict, he gave an answer Democrats immediately pounced on.
“I don’t think about America’s financial situation,” he said. “I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump did, however, throw his support behind a modest cost-of-living measure Monday, saying he wanted to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax to alleviate Iran-related price hikes.
House GOP leaders, however, are not thrilled with the idea. They are hoping the White House finds a way for Trump to take some steps to lower gas prices through executive actions and leave Congress out of it, according to five people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations.
There are also scores of Republicans, for instance, who publicly admonished then-President Joe Biden for floating the same idea amid in 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and, in the words of one of the people, would have to “eat shit” if they go back on that position now.
Thune didn’t rule out an eventual vote on a gas-tax holiday, but he characterized proposals from Hawley and others as “trial balloons.” He suggested the move could impact highway projects without meaningfully lowering gas prices.“The question is, would it get passed on to the consumer … or would it get absorbed in the supply chain somehow?” he said.
Johnson told reporters Tuesday suspending the federal gas tax was an “intriguing” idea but added that Republicans have to work through any “unintended consequences” of such a move and will continue to discuss it.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was also noncommittal: “Obviously we all want to see gas prices come back down, and when the Iran conflict is resolved, they will, and they’ll come down quickly. I don’t think anybody disputes that.”
“You’re seeing the president work really hard to try to get this resolved,” he added. “Hopefully it’s soon.”
But the top Republicans may be forced into action as rank-and-file backers of a gas-tax holiday, such as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), arguing Congress needs to act quickly to pass a bill before the Memorial Day recess starts in just over a week.
That sense of urgency is not shared by other GOP lawmakers who view a gas-tax holiday as an ineffective Band-Aid — including Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), who compared it to “taking aspirin for cancer,” and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who identified a more consequential driver of high prices.
“I think instead of suspending the tax, we should suspend the war,” he said.
Mia McCarthy, Riley Rogerson and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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