By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republicans in the U.S. Congress turn in earnest this week to their biggest challenge of Donald Trump’s presidency: trying to bridge internal divisions over proposed cuts to Medicaid and popular green energy initiatives to pay for a landmark tax-cut bill they hope to enact by June.
After a two-week recess marked by some heated encounters with constituents back home, Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives are due to begin debating and voting on segments of Trump’s agenda legislation that would also fund his crackdown on immigration and bolster fossil fuel production and military spending.
“We’d like to have it on the president’s desk by June,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told Reuters. “It’s going to be a very transparent process, where committees will be holding their hearings and mark-ups in public view.”
Scalise said the top goal for Republicans is to extend provisions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, a move that nonpartisan researchers estimate would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade.
Add in hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending for border security, deportations and defense, and the cost to the U.S. budget could skyrocket.
The budget blueprint for Trump’s agenda could add $5.8 trillion to the $36 trillion U.S. debt in the next decade, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates. Republicans claim the cost will be covered by a combination of spending cuts, higher economic growth and revenues from energy deregulation and Trump’s tariffs.
With slim Republican majorities of 220-213 seats in the House and 53-47 in the Senate, it is not clear that House Republicans can meet Speaker Mike Johnson’s aim of passing the legislation and sending it on to the Senate before lawmakers leave town on May 22 for their Memorial Day recess.
House and Senate Republicans barely managed to pass a budget resolution that will allow them to enact the Trump agenda by circumventing Democrats, who have nonetheless vowed to halt Trump’s legislative juggernaut.
“We’re in active legislative combat,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y.
“They want to enact the largest Medicaid cut in American history. That is going to hurt families, hurt children, hurt seniors, hurt people with disabilities, hurt everyday Americans.”
NOW COMES THE HARD PART
The budget blueprint contained no details about spending cuts. Now Republicans must grapple with changes that carry tangible consequences for their home districts.
“It probably takes a little longer to get it out of the House,” Representative Nicole Malliotakis said. “We’re not just talking about the broad strokes here. We’re talking actual legislative language, actual numbers.”
To win support from hardline conservatives, House Republicans set a spending cut target of $2 trillion over a decade and agreed that the scope of Trump’s tax cuts would be scaled back to reflect any shortfall in funding reductions.
But with House and Senate moderates pushing back on deep cuts to social safety-net programs and environmental initiatives, some worry that the $2 trillion goal could be out of reach.
“That is the biggest challenge, getting that to the sweet spot where we have enough significant and noteworthy spending cuts to finalize the tax side,” said Representative Blake Moore, vice chair of the House Republican Conference.
Up to now, Republicans have looked to the Medicaid healthcare program for lower-income Americans and green tax credits for $880 billion in spending cuts over a decade. Education and agriculture programs have been targeted for an additional $560 billion in cuts.
But concerns about Medicaid among a dozen House Republicans and several Senate Republicans have prompted Trump and party leaders to assure lawmakers that savings will not lead to benefit cuts.
Those assurances have reduced fears about major cuts in the federal contribution to Medicaid, which is funded jointly by federal and state governments. Over 79 million Americans were enrolled in the program or a related healthcare service for poor children as of October.
Lawmakers still think they can achieve hundreds of billions of dollars in savings through work requirements for able-bodied beneficiaries, spending caps on those earning above the poverty line, restrictions on Medicaid provider taxes and heightened efforts to ensure eligibility.
“We’ve got to see what’s in the bill,” said Malliotakis, who opposes major Medicaid cuts. “We’re not going to support something that will harm our hospitals or our seniors or our disabled.”
House Republicans also face a conundrum over proposed cuts to green energy tax credits, while the White House has said it supports initiatives for carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy and geothermal energy that some want to ax.
Scalise said environmental provisions remain on the chopping block but said the outcome will ultimately depend on how much support cost-saving proposals can win during upcoming debates.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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