Friday is going to be a tough day for House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas. For the past few weeks, his fellow committee chairs have been passing along the various components that will form the legislative backbone to President Donald Trump’s agenda and extend the 2017 tax cuts due to expire next year. It’s up to Arrington’s committee to pull those assorted pieces together into one coherent bill that will be able to pass the House — and the odds aren’t exactly stacked in his favor.
All the House committees have filled in the blanks now, passing their final works on to Arrington to assemble.
Arrington’s first attempt at passing a budget framework to fit Trump’s demand for “one big, beautiful bill” hit a roadblock in February when the Senate balked at the deep spending cuts it required. It took another two months of work before the two chambers settled on a joint budget reconciliation bill that would let them move forward on a party-line basis, freezing Democrats out of the process. The framework that passed provided instructions to the relevant congressional committees on how much they should spend and cut from the programs under their purview, leaving the details to the chairs to work out.
All the House committees have filled in the blanks now, passing their final works on to Arrington to assemble. While the bills in question may have passed each panel, the sum will prove to be more challenging than its parts. Namely because, as I’ve noted before, there are different factions within the House GOP with different priorities for the final bill, some of which are diametrically opposed to each other.
The most vocal wing are the blue state Republicans who want a bigger deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, included in the Ways and Means Committee’s section of the package. Five of them have dug in their heels, calling the increased $30,000 cap included in the bill a nonstarter. As a reminder, if all members are present, it will only take four Republicans voting against the bill to tank it, given united Democratic opposition.
Less cohesive are the GOP members concerned about the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s proposed cuts. More than a dozen House Republicans want to keep the clean energy credits that the bill nixes, which have been a boon in many of their districts. There are similar concerns about the Agriculture Committee’s plans to shift costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to the states, which could see either massive holes blown in state budgets or hundreds of thousands removed from the program.
Most of those issues could be resolved were it not for the group with the most leverage: the House Freedom Caucus. Many of the far-right group’s members think the committees included too much budget gimmickry and not enough tangible spending cuts. They’re particularly irate that the changes to Medicaid included in the Energy and Commerce bill don’t go far enough to reduce spending on the program, despite it already potentially kicking millions of people off their health care.
Most of those issues could be resolved were it not for the group with the most leverage: the House Freedom Caucus.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., huddled with many of the concerned members in hopes of tamping down a potential revolt on the House floor. But as Politico reported Thursday afternoon, there might not even be enough votes to get the bill through the Budget Committee. Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Roy Norman of South Carolina said they won’t vote for the current bill as it doesn’t make the draconian cuts they deem necessary to earn their support. Both are Freedom Caucus members and also sit on the House Rules Committee — the next hurdle that would have to be overcome before the full House could vote.
And that’s just the problems with getting it through the House. There are already rumbles of concern coming from the Senate over the scope of the spending cuts their counterparts are making across the Capitol. Once the GOP senators have made their changes, who knows how much more wrangling will need to be done to get the bill over the line.
For Arrington, though, his chief concern is getting through Friday with a bill to hand off to the Rules Committee. Johnson still wants to get the full package passed before Memorial Day. There’s no firm Plan B in place for what happens if the big, beautiful bill as it stands fails to garner enough support by then. That doesn’t leave Arrington much time at all to solve this vexing a puzzle, one where one misplaced piece could cause the whole thing to collapse entirely.
