Speaker Mike Johnson is facing an increasingly narrow path to pass President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda through the lower chamber where House Republicans currently hold a one-seat majority.
The House is scheduled to vote as early as Tuesday evening on a resolution that will unlock a forthcoming budget bill to pass the president’s first-year tax and spending priorities. Johnson faces a difficult balancing act to get centrist House Republicans and conservative fiscal hawks in agreement on the amount of proposed spending cuts within the resolution and which government programs to target for savings in a forthcoming budget bill.
Trump endorsed the House budget proposal on Feb. 19, increasing pressure on Johnson to deliver the votes to pass a budget resolution this week despite leading a one-seat Republican majority.
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Every House Democrat is expected to vote against the budget resolution, limiting House GOP leadership to losing just one Republican vote to secure the resolution’s passage. Republican Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz announced she will vote “no” on the “current version” of the resolution Sunday, citing concerns that House Republicans’ budget plan does not go far enough in cutting spending.
“[R]oughly 85% of spending is not ever even looked at by Congress — convenient if you would like to hide waste, fraud and abuse,” Spartz wrote on X. “I have a responsibility to the people I represent to find $1T of their hard earned money!
Johnson and House GOP leadership are attempting to pass all of the president’s tax and spending priorities in “one big, beautiful bill.” The budget plan provides instructions to House committees to cut spending by $200 billion annually over a ten-year period, assuming House Republicans are able to hit the $2 trillion target in spending cuts laid out by the budget resolution.
Some centrist House Republicans, including several in battleground districts, are balking at incorporating deep spending cuts in the resolution to help offset $4.5 trillion in deficit increases to execute the president’s tax agenda, which includes an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
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Eight House Republicans, led by Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, wrote a joint letter to Johnson on Feb. 19 urging House GOP leadership to steer clear of cuts to Medicaid, pell grants and food assistance programs in a forthcoming budget bill.
Conservative fiscal hawks, such as Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy are pushing House Republicans to take a more aggressive approach to cut mandatory spending through the budget reconciliation process. Roy has cautioned that the current House budget resolution instructions could add to the deficit, but said he is open to supporting the resolution.
The Senate approved a slimmed-down budget plan on Feb. 21 that approves funding for the president’s border security and defense spending priorities. Thune has cast the Senate’s budget proposal as a back-up plan in the event the House fails to pass its own budget resolution.
“[I]f the House can produce a bill next week that deals with the tax pieces of this, components of it, I expect at some point this is all going to merge,” Thune told Fox News’ Will Cain on Feb. 19. “And you know, we’re all working in the same direction, we’re all headed to the same outcome, and that is to allow the president to deliver on the agenda that he campaigned on, and that the American people, I think, expect him to deliver on.”
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Johnson has said the Senate’s budget proposal is dead on arrival in the House chamber.
Spartz has previously been at odds with House GOP leadership over cutting government spending and addressing the country’s $36 trillion-and-growing debt. The Indiana Republican announced she would not sit on committees or participate in the House Republican conference last December, citing her discontent with House GOP leadership. Spartz was originally noncommittal on whether to back Johnson’s speakership bid before ultimately voting “yes” on Johnson during the Jan. 3 vote.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.