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Rachel Schilke


NextImg:House GOP budget is in danger as holdouts dismiss Trump’s outreach

House GOP leaders are turning to President Donald Trump to convince holdout Republicans to pass a budget resolution this week, though fiscal conservatives say a White House pressure campaign may not be enough.

At least 30 House Republicans are standing firm against the Trump-backed budget resolution coming back from the Senate over concerns that the proposed spending cuts do not go far enough. A handful of holdouts have been invited to a meeting with the White House on Tuesday afternoon as part of the latest effort to get them on board to pass the resolution, which would kickstart the process of enacting Trump’s tax, energy, border priorities under a process called reconciliation.

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But unlike last time, when Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) leaned on Trump, it does not appear that the president’s overtures will be enough to get them to cave, for now.

“There’s nothing that I can hear at the White House that I don’t understand about the situation,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) told reporters. “It’s not going to help getting enough votes to pass this this week. It’s just — there [are] too many members who are just not going to vote for it, no matter what.”

Not all holdouts were invited to the meeting, which is to include Freedom Caucus members and other Republicans. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told reporters Tuesday morning that he was not invited, even though he is against the bill. Norman, who sits on the House Rules Committee, said Monday that he was against the bill on the floor but was unsure whether he would vote for the procedural rule to advance the legislation out of committee.

Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Keith Self (R-TX) are other holdouts who said they were not invited to the meeting with the president. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) declined to comment on whether he was invited to the White House, but he expressed that he is upset with how the budget fight is shaping out.

“The Senate budget would increase deficits,” Roy told reporters Tuesday. “The Senate needs to produce a plan to us with seriousness and resolve to reduce deficits. I’m tired of the fake math and response, and that’s what it is: fake math.”

“The Senate has produced a budget that is phony math, and I’m not going to support it,” he continued.

When asked how many votes short he thinks Johnson is, Roy said, “Enough.”

The Senate-passed plan allows for more than $5 trillion in tax cuts, including an extension of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is set to expire this year. But the Senate is relying on a budget gimmick to make the $3.8 trillion tax cut extension appear to be cost-free, thus blunting the need for deeper budget cuts the House wants.

Convincing holdouts concerned about the deficit is already off to a rough start. Johnson met with Freedom Caucus members Monday night, saying it was a “great conversation” and they are “moving the ball forward.”

But the Freedom Caucus met separately with Trump officials from the Office of Management and Budget: Director Russ Vought, Deputy Director Dan Bishop, and James Braid, the Capitol Hill liaison for the White House. Punchbowl News reported that the OMB meeting did nothing to sway any hard-liners opposed to the budget.

Some Freedom Caucus members are skeptical that the meeting with Trump at the White House will flip any holdouts, as the president did during the budget resolution battle in February and the stopgap spending deal, known as a continuing resolution, in March.

“I love the president. This is not what he’s asking for,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), who is not attending the meeting, told reporters regarding the budget resolution. “What the Senate sent over is nothing close to what he’s asking. He wants to balance a budget. This is only going to make things worse.”

The Senate passed a compromised one-bill budget resolution Saturday after both chambers passed competing legislation at the beginning of the year. The budget plan, which includes a $5 trillion increase in the federal debt ceiling, leaves the House and Senate on different pages when it comes to spending offsets.

The House instructions would require $2 trillion in cuts, while the Senate only treats that figure as an aspirational goal and set spending cuts at $4 billion — a figure both hard-liner budget hawks and members of the Budget Committee have called “unserious” and “unacceptable.”

Following passage in the Senate, the bill was sent back to the House for final passage. House GOP leaders have been recycling the same messaging points from the first budget resolution, hammering that the measure is only a blueprint to unlock the reconciliation process.

“The Senate version of the budget resolution does not prevent the House from achieving the goals we set for ourselves earlier in this process,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) said during the weekly leadership press conference. “In fact, it doesn’t mean a thing to the House. We will continue to advocate for the final reconciliation bill to include historic spending reductions while protecting essential programs.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) pleaded with fiscal hawks upset with the process to remember that Trump’s agenda is on the line, including renewing the Trump tax cuts and slashing federal waste.

“President Trump’s not the only one that ran on all of those objectives,” Scalise said. “We did too. House Republicans ran on those same things. We need to follow through now and get the job done. And nobody said it would be easy.”

“We cannot delay,” Scalise added. “The country can’t afford for us to delay a month or longer to wait on the Senate getting where we are.”

Per the current schedule, the House is in session until Thursday before lawmakers go on a two-week recess. But some Republicans have urged leadership to keep members in town and find consensus on the budget resolution instead of forcing a vote this week when they don’t have the support.

“What I wouldn’t do is put a bill on the floor that I do not believe has any chance of passage and, frankly, is embarrassingly weak with respect to its efforts to rein in spending,” one House Republican told the Washington Examiner, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) told the Deseret News that the House should stay in session until the budget resolution is passed. Eyes were on Luna to see whether she would support the legislation after Republican leadership worked to tank her proxy voting bill last week, but she said Tuesday that she is a “yes” on the resolution.

She shifted her blame off leadership to members of the Freedom Caucus, a body of which she is no longer a member.

“As of right now, the votes are not there [because of] of the same people that were holding the speaker hostage last week on the SAVE Act,” Luna said, referencing a GOP bill to require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote that was held up last week.

For Johnson’s part, he remains in high spirits that the resolution can pass.

“The idea is to put it in a rule and get it on the floor this week,” Johnson told reporters. “But we’re in the consensus-building business, as you all know, and I’m working on that around the clock.”

When asked about holdouts such as Harris refusing to attend the White House meeting, the speaker said that was “uncharacteristic” for him.

“He’s a very reasonable guy, and he’s always open to thoughtful conversation, so I don’t know,” Johnson said.

With some vacancies filling in, Johnson can afford to lose three votes and still pass legislation along party lines. He will not get any help from Democrats, with House Democratic leaders calling for “maximum attendance” from their ranks in a “Dear Colleague” letter sent Monday to members.

One Democratic absence is already anticipated after Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) was hospitalized due to a medical event related to his gallbladder. He is now in intensive care in New Jersey. There are two other Democratic absences following the recent deaths of Reps. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ).

Despite dwindling numbers, Democrats are all but assured to vote unanimously against the budget resolution they have panned as “reckless.”

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“The only one we can believe is Thomas Massie, who’s principled, and if he says he’s a no, he’s going to be a no,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said. “Everyone else generally will say one thing until they get a phone call from the president.”

That happened in February when Trump called Burchett and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) to persuade them to vote for the budget resolution. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) rarely votes for any legislation relating to spending, so Johnson must keep his other holdouts to a maximum of two if he wishes to see the budget resolution passed on the first try.