WASHINGTON—With a promise of House passage within the next three months, Speaker Mike Johnson is outlining a very ambitious timeframe to approve President-elect Donald Trump’s big-ticket legislative agenda.
Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, told NBC News on Tuesday that we are aiming for ultimate passage in April.
He restated that the House intends to enact Trump’s policies on taxes, domestic energy, and border security in a single, magnificent bill. Johnson has also demanded that the plan include increases to the debt cap and spending cuts.
With Johnson’s paper-thin House majority and no chance of gaining Democratic support, it would be an impossible undertaking. With two lawmakers departing for the Trump administration, Republicans’ lead of 219-215 is about to momentarily narrow to 217-215. Johnson had stated his goal of passing a budget resolution by the end of February in order to begin the reconciliation process.
Republican senators are not certain that a single bill covering the entirety of Trump’s goals would be passed quickly.
In an interview, Texas Senator John Cornyn stated, “I believe we’ve seen that the House is operating on a razor’s edge.” The more we argue over one or two measures, the more we are failing to adopt a budget and provide directions for reconciliation. Therefore, I believe it is time to break the glass and admit that the House might not be able to pass what the Senate can. We must all agree on something. What the House can pass is, in my opinion, the actual limiting element.
With greater GOP support, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is not giving up on his goal of splitting the process into two bills in order to win an early, swift victory on border financing.
I’m optimistic that we can pass legislation addressing the border as part of a reconciliation package. Thune told reporters on Tuesday that the process of how that occurs is still open to debate and negotiation.
A week after Trump met secretly with Senate Republicans to discuss his agenda approach, the one-versus-two measure dispute is still going strong. Both sides have been emboldened to dig in after Trump expressed his preference for one bill during a heated argument, according to senators, but seemed indifferent to the process.
The conference did not resolve the dispute, according to Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.
Do you think it looked that way? He laughed as he spoke. It didn’t.
GOP eyes $80 billion-$100 billion for the border
Cramer offered a solution: Let the Senate begin with a smaller border-focused package in preparation for needing to switch to two tracks, while Johnson and the House attempt to pass a single one.
As you saw, the House may be an issue, so let Speaker Johnson and his team do what they think is necessary. They are more familiar with the House than we are, he said. We pay our bills in the interim. We perform a scaled-down version. Additionally, you have both of them on the table simultaneously.
The Senate can provide the House till April, he said: The senator went on to say that people will become a little impatient if April drags on for too long.
Taxes are more difficult. It’s going to take longer,” Cramer stated, adding that the two-track argument makes sense in part because border money is more urgent than the tax component.
Although the new Trump administration is ready to crack down on immigration, Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, stated that it would be advantageous to have more resources at the outset.
Cruz stated, “That’s why I believe we should do two bills.”
Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will be in charge of the bill’s immigration portion, told NBC News on Tuesday that his committee is communicating with Trump’s advisors.
According to him, Stephen Miller, the Trump adviser who focuses on immigration, is the perfect person to ask about all the things you need for deportation, the wall, and more staff. However, we’ve heard estimates ranging from $80 billion to $100 billion.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., stated that Republicans must be prepared to take political chances in order to pass the law and implement tough expenditure cuts to reduce the cost.
“We have a historic opportunity to make the difficult decisions that we need to make,” he remarked. It will also require some bravery and the willingness to risk losing your reelection.
Debt ceiling and SALT deductions
Furthermore, Tillis questioned if House Republicans would raise the debt ceiling on a party-line basis.
I have no idea how that occurs. “It would be extraordinary if it did,” he remarked. However, I fail to understand how it occurs given the House’s votes.
In addition to health care funding and an extension of the federal deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), which primarily affect high-tax states like New York and New Jersey, Tillis proposed easing pressure on Republicans by severing the expiring child tax credit provisions and negotiating them in a separate bipartisan agreement with Democrats.
The child tax credit was awarded to you. For people on the Affordable Care Act exchange, you have the subsidy. By negotiating something in good faith, you have a lot of Democratic goals there that may actually relieve some of the pressure on what we need to do in terms of reconciliation, he said. salt or not. I prefer my pecans salted. Up here, I dislike a lot of SALT deductions.
To placate House members in impacted states who have the power to make or break the package, Republicans now want to increase the SALT deduction in their party-line version.
A swing district legislator who supports a greater SALT deduction, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., stated that merely doing away with the marriage penalty and capping couples at $20,000, as some have suggested, is insufficient.
“That’s dreadfully inadequate,” Lawler replied.
Knowing that their votes will determine whether the overall tax cut extension is passed, Lawler, Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., and three other Republicans are forming a coalition to negotiate a SALT agreement with party leaders.
Johnson’s April goal is ambitious, according to Jon Traub, a managing principal at Deloitte Tax LLP and a former Republican staff director on the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes taxes.
This is partially due to the complex roadblocks the Senate budget process will install to allow Republicans to avoid the 60-vote threshold, which necessitates that the bill be restricted to tax and spending issues.
“I think the timing is really ambitious,” Traub added. I believe the moving parts are largely known and identifiable, therefore it’s not difficult. However, it will be challenging to achieve consensus on the income targets in the first place and to combine them with whatever revenue restrictions they decide to impose on themselves.