Donald Trump and Mike Johnson failed to convince enough deficit hawks to back the latest budget plan for the president’s agenda — forcing the speaker to punt his planned Wednesday vote on the resolution and sending House leadership scrambling for a compromise that could satisfy hard-liners’ demands for more spending cuts.
Now, the speaker is staring down two potential options to get holdouts to come on board.
Plan A: Rules — GOP leaders “tentatively” plan to bring the budget blueprint back to the Rules Committee Thursday morning, Johnson said as he emerged from a meeting late Wednesday. They would tack on an amendment that would guarantee more spending cuts in the party-line package of tax cuts, border security investments, energy policies and more.
Rep. Lloyd Smucker has proposed tying the tax cuts to spending cuts — something he said would get him to “yes.” Another option is more straightforward: Language to the budget resolution that would require that a certain level of spending cuts be achieved in a final product that hard-liner holdouts want.
“There’s a mutual commitment that we’re going to find real savings in federal spending, because we have to do that,” Johnson said Wednesday night.
But that would kick the budget blueprint back to the Senate, which already tweaked this version of the budget once and has also held two all-night vote-a-ramas in less than six weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was deeply unenthusiastic about holding a third: “I think everybody realizes that we’re at the time that we’ve got to move,” he said.
Plus, Thune would have to get key senators on board yet again. And many House moderates were privately counting on the Senate’s spending levels to avoid the steep $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion cuts proposed by the House.
Johnson is already trying to reassure them. He reiterated Wednesday night that House Republicans would not cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, even as their framework makes Medicaid cuts likely to meet their massive deficit reduction targets.
Plan B: Conference Committee — Heading straight to conference would be a rare and time-consuming process that would require House and Senate leaders and committee chairs to hash out the differences between their chambers’ plans. It’s a last resort, but one that some hard-liners have pushed in recent days to avoid a failed floor vote and force more concessions on spending cuts.
Meanwhile, the House also hasn’t played the full Trump card (even after the president Tuesday told House Republicans to “stop grandstanding”). Johnson said he stepped out of a meeting with holdouts Wednesday night to speak with Trump, who’s closely monitoring the situation.
“The president is very anxious, as I am, for us to get this done,” Johnson said after a late Wednesday meeting.
A note for your calendars: Johnson said it is not his “intention” to leave for the scheduled two-week Easter recess before adopting a budget resolution — though he noted that Passover starts this Saturday and he doesn’t want voting to stray into the holiday. The speaker said “the calendar is not our friend,” but “if we have to come back next week, then we’ll do that.”
What else we’re watching:
— GOP senators back Biden-era tax credit: Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and John Curtis are leading a letter to their leadership, alongside Sens. Thom Tillis and Jerry Moran, asking that clean-energy tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law not be repealed as part of the GOP bill enacting Trump’s agenda. The senators say the credits are essential to the president’s goals of spurring American energy and manufacturing dominance.
— Michelle Bowman hearing: Trump’s pick to be the Federal Reserve’s top regulatory official faces Senate Banking this morning to pitch an overhaul of how the Fed supervises banks and argue for a “tailored approach” to regulation that makes it easier for financial institutions to innovate. Her industry-friendly approach broadly echoes the roadmap that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined this week for easing bank regulations.
Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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