House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith says he won’t get behind the GOP’s next budget reconciliation bill if tax provisions aren’t included.
“I won’t support it unless tax is in it,” the Missouri Republican said in an interview Tuesday morning — a potential warning to GOP leaders who can’t afford defections given their razor-thin majority.
As House Republicans prepare to follow last summer’s tax and spending megabill with passage of a party-line immigration enforcement package as soon as Tuesday night, conversations have turned to what the GOP would put in a third filibuster-skirting reconciliation measure.
House GOP leaders have been meeting with different factions of their conference in recent days and weeks, from moderates to hard-line conservatives, on what they might support. There are talks about cracking down on fraud in health care and other social programs and adding some federal energy permitting provisions.
Leaders may try to revive a number of provisions that were ultimately not included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, such as one that would adjust a property’s purchase point for inflation. Smith said he has a list of priorities that he would “be happy to release” once Speaker Mike Johnson confirms that taxes will be part of the next reconciliation package.
But Smith said Johnson has not yet communicated to him whether his committee would have buy-in.
“I have not been notified whether tax is part of reconciliation yet,” Smith said. “I’d love for the speaker to say tax is going to be a part of it.”
A number of House Republicans — including those in leadership — are voicing concerns that including tax provisions would allow Democrats in the Senate to force floor votes on politically fraught health care amendments, putting vulnerable Republican senators in a difficult spot just before the midterms.
Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who will need to thread this needle on his side of the Capitol on behalf of his members, said in an interview Monday that he didn’t know what discussions were happening in the House.
He said there is “a lot of tax law that would be helpful to do” in a third reconciliation bill, and that “there are a number of reforms of the health care entitlement system — particularly the health care entitlement system — that I think would be very helpful and would not reduce health care access or reduce access to any of our safety net programs.”
Yet Crapo waved off a question about whether some looking for cost savings in Medicare could create difficult votes for senators in tough races.
“These are always battles,” he said. “I think the American people are completely ready to see us deal with waste, fraud and abuse in all government spending.”
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