House Republicans coalesced and adopted the Senate’s budget rewrite on Thursday after spending the week bashing the upper chamber’s offering as an unserious attempt at cutting spending.
Closed-door meetings and assurances that Senate Republicans are serious about steep spending cuts, in line with the House’s budget blueprint, helped sway frustrated House fiscal hawks and save President Trump’s agenda from a costly derailment.
The 216-214 House vote to adopt the budget resolution tees up the filibuster-proof reconciliation process that Republicans plan to use to pass sweeping tax and spending cuts, border and defense funding, and energy policy changes.
Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, voted against the plan.
The holdouts who flipped are relying on written and verbal commitments from GOP leaders that the reconciliation bill will include at least $1.5 trillion in cuts and will not add to the deficit when an estimated $2.5 trillion worth of economic growth is factored in.
“If we don’t, there’ll be a mutiny and they know it,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican.
A key breakthrough came Thursday morning as House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, held a joint press conference to announce a shared commitment to achieving at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in the final reconciliation bill.
That’s the floor for spending cuts the House provided its committees in its budget instructions for the reconciliation bill. The Senate had set a meager $4 billion floor to preserve maximum flexibility, given strict rules that risk derailing the bill if committees in the upper chamber fall short of the target.
The speaker said the two chambers are “directly aligned” on the $1.5 trillion target. Mr. Thune said many GOP senators believe that’s a minimum, although he was more cautious than Mr. Johnson when describing the alignment on $1.5 trillion as “our ambition in the Senate.”
“We’re certainly going to do everything we can to be as aggressive as possible to see that we are serious about the matter,” Mr. Thune said.
House fiscal hawks have said all week that they don’t trust the Senate and demanded the upper chamber show them how they plan to achieve steep spending cuts.
“The Senate is prone to set up, to give us the shaft, like they’ve done for decades and decades,” Rep. Eric Burlison, Missouri Republican, said Wednesday. “Every time we get to this moment, it’s like Lucy with the football. They pull the football.”
After the vote Thursday, he cited “personal, verbal assurances” that were cemented on camera and in writing as a reason to believe the football will remain in place this time.
“We have a written document, a list of terms that the Senate and the White House agreed to, along with the leadership for a specific amount of cuts,” Mr. Burlison said.
Some others are not confident despite voting for the budget.
“I don’t trust most of the people up here,” Rep. Eli Crane, Arizona Republican, said. “I also know it’s a very complex system with a very diverse body, but I believe the swamp is going to do what the swamp is going to do at the end of the day.”
He allowed that $1.5 trillion in cuts, if it can be achieved, is “pretty decent” for breaking the Washington status quo – “even though I think in many ways it’s pathetic when you have a $2 trillion annual deficit.”
In addition to Mr. Thune agreeing to the $1.5 trillion floor, fiscal hawks pointed to a commitment from Mr. Johnson to adhere to a House provision in the budget that would allow the amount of tax cuts Republicans include in the bill to be dialed up or down based on the corresponding amount of spending cuts.
“The commitment was to not increase the deficit,” Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, said.
That will be an incentive for Senate Republicans, whose top reconciliation priority is making the president’s first-term tax cuts permanent, to adopt more cuts, he argued, because otherwise “it’s not going to pass the House.”
And if the speaker were to break his commitment, Mr. Roy said, “it would be the death of reconciliation.”
Mr. Roy said the holdouts also received key commitments from the White House to make significant cuts from Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act law and “the waste, fraud and abuse with Medicaid.”
Mr. Thune’s public comments on the spending target came after a private meeting the night before with some of the holdouts, led by House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland, that failed to sway enough dissenters.
Mr. Johnson corralled the holdouts in a room off the House floor, while holding an unrelated vote open for over an hour, to secure the votes for a Wednesday night vote, to no avail.
Negotiations dragged on into the night and by morning, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thune’s joint press conference, along with the written commitments, helped seal the deal.
Mr. Johnson complimented Mr. Trump for his engagement but noted “he didn’t have to call a single member” in the home stretch.
“He allowed me the space to do what I need to do, and then we got the votes together. We reaffirmed our commitments,” the speaker said. “It’s real.”
Mr. Massie doesn’t believe that, saying he sees a 0% chance that House and Senate Republicans will agree on $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.
“You do not have a commitment unless it is in the base text of the bill,” he said, referring to the Senate’s binding budget instructions. “There is no real commitment.”
But with the budget resolution adopted, Republicans can finally get to work on the real negotiations over spending cuts and other policies. The budget resolution gives House and Senate committees a May 9 deadline to report their pieces of the reconciliation bill.
Mr. Johnson previously set an ambitious goal to have a completed reconciliation package on the president’s desk by Memorial Day, but notably, he did not reiterate it after the delayed budget vote.
The speaker said 11 House committees would work through Congress’ two-week recess for Easter and Passover on their portions of the package – some of which are already drafted – and begin the markup process when lawmakers return.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, said lawmakers would work as quickly as they can, noting Mr. Trump is “not somebody that wants to wait around for months.”
“That’s why we want to get it done by this summer,” he said. “I’d love to see it on the President’s desk by the end of May.”
Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham said his chamber is looking to move quickly to provide urgently needed funding for defense, border security and immigration enforcement and raise the debt limit before the summer deadline.
“Time is of the essence,” the South Carolina Republican said.
