Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought defended the House’s latest budget reconciliation bill framework Friday, hours after conservatives used their leverage to postpone the bill’s advancement from the Budget Committee.
The defeat of the bill was another bump in the ongoing messy negotiating process of the massive piece of legislation, with multiple squabbles inside the House Republican Conference spilling to the public.
Despite the holdup, the committee is scheduled to meet again Sunday night, and most expect the bill to eventually pass the House, possibly by the end of the following week – meeting Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) previously set Memorial Day goal.
Yet President Donald Trump is anxious to advance his signature legislation, which Breitbart News’s Sean Moran reports would extend and expand the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, unleash energy development, and slash spending.
Trump chastised holdouts as “grandstanders” in a Truth Social post just before the vote, Breitbart News’s Nick Gilbertson reported.
The defense of the bill from Vought, a fiscal hawk seen by many in the House conservative’s block as one of their own, is a light touch from the White House that nonetheless signals it will apply the pressure needed to move the bill along.
Vought’s post on X said he thinks critics of the bill on fiscal grounds “are profoundly wrong,” calling the bill “truly historic.”
“As a nation, we have had no spending cut victories of any consequence in nearly thirty years,” he said. “In 1997, the Balanced Budget Agreement included roughly $800 billion in mandatory savings adjusted for inflation.”
The current House framework waiting to be formally assembled by the Budget Committee “includes $1.6 trillion in savings,” Vought touted. “These are not gimmicks but real reforms that lower spending and improve the programs.”
The four conservatives who opposed the bill in committee, Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), and Josh Brecheen (R-OK), argue too many of the bill’s reforms – like instituting work requirements on able-bodied Medicaid recipients, which doesn’t kick in until 2029 – are dangerously postponed, and that the savings – like the phaseout of some (but not all) of President Joe Biden’s green energy tax cuts from the Inflation Reduction Act – are back-loaded.
Savings and reforms kicked to later years are likely to be stripped in future legislation, particularly if Democrats retake Congress, they argue.
They’d like further reforms as well, particularly on Medicaid.
Vought says the bill hits the marks the conservatives called for when passing the budget resolution in March that set the parameters for budget reconciliation to begin.
“The bill satisfies the very red-line test that House fiscal hawks laid out a few weeks ago that stated that the cost of any tax cut could be paid for with $2.5 trillion in assumed economic growth, but the rest had to be covered with savings from reform,” he posted. “This bill exceeds that test by nearly $100 billion.”
Of the eleven committees that contributed elements of the comprehensive reconciliation framework, the budget resolution instructed eight of them to find specific levels of savings. All eight committees met or exceeded their instructions.
Yet the resolve of the conservative holdouts – who all spoke respectfully of the White House and House leadership’s efforts thus far – to further improve the bill is likely strengthened after news Friday evening that Moody’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating from Aaa to Aa1, citing the budgetary burden the government faces amid high interest rates.
Vought told conservatives to take the historic win, reminding them of the slim House majority and insisting the legislation as currently drafted – which will certainly be further altered by the Senate, if not by the House Rules Committee before it advances to the floor – is a step enabling further progress by the Trump administration.
“After nothing happening for decades, the House bill provides a historic $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings…with a three-seat majority,” he said. “$36 trillion in debt is not solved overnight. It is solved by advancing and securing victories at a scale that over time, gives a fighting shot to addressing the problem.”
Those further steps likely include recessions – which, like reconciliation, only needs a majority to pass in the Senate – and impoundment, although any impoundments exercised by President Trump are almost certain to be challenged in court.
Congress also must fund the government through the annual appropriations process by the September 30 deadline, although government funding bills are subject to the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for most legislation.
But Vought makes a strong case for Republicans to get on board now and keep the bill advancing.
“The House’s One Big Beautiful Bill deserves passage for many reasons…tax cuts, border security funding, eliminating the Green New Deal, work requirements to end dependency…but it should not be lost on anyone, the degree to which it ends decades of fiscal futility and gets us winning again. It deserves the vote of every member of Congress,” he said.
Once the reconciliation bill passes the House, it proceeds to the Senate, which is likely to make further changes. The House would need to pass the Senate amended bill or proceed to a conference committee, which would produce a compromise product then needing to pass each chamber.
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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