Republican leadership in the House has its hands full this week. House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to get about a dozen fiscally conservative Republicans to sign off on the Senate’s budget plan by the end of the week.
President Donald Trump has urged the House to “quickly” pass the plan that the Senate approved on a party-line vote after 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning.
Eager to calm turbulent markets, extend Trump’s expiring 2017 tax cuts, and provide funding to secure the border, House leadership is working to get potential GOP rebels in line.
What’s leadership’s argument to GOP budget hawks? Namely, that members of Congress should not worry too much about the plan’s implications for the budget deficit because it isn’t binding.
“Look, the resolution is not the law itself,” Johnson told The Daily Signal at the Capitol.
“The resolution continues the process; it’s a necessary step. So, the real deliberation and the consensus has to be built around the bill itself, and that’s what I’ve told everybody.”
The resolution has met plenty of opposition.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has said he would probably “vote against it” at this point, as he thinks its framework would lead to excess spending and, as a result, higher taxes. His remarks have been echoed by several other Freedom Caucus members.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, has also criticized the plan as “unserious and disappointing.”
It creates “a mere $4 billion in enforceable cuts, less than one day’s worth of borrowing by the federal government,” Arrington wrote in his response to the plan.
At Tuesday’s press conference, House leadership called on skeptics to sign off on the plan in order to not stall progress. They implied that concerns would be satisfied when the actual legislation came into consideration.
“Remember, the Senate version of the budget resolution does not prevent the House from achieving the goals we set for ourselves earlier in this process, said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn.
“In fact, it doesn’t mean a thing to the House. We will continue to advocate for the final [budget] reconciliation bill to include historic spending reductions while protecting essential programs. But we must act now.”
