Capitol Hill Republicans are staring at a crucial three-week stretch in their efforts to enact President Trump's ambitious tax agenda, hoping that the House will be able to move forward with compromise budget resolutions to pace the party's aggressive timeline.
Senate Republicans last month adopted a two-track strategy budget resolution to advance Trump's legislative agenda, moving forward with the first package that includes border and defense funding. A few days later, House GOP approved the “one big, beautiful bill” framework filled with Trump's domestic policy priorities, including tax cuts.
Since then, top lawmakers have been working across the Capitol to harmonize the two blueprints, discussing many important details, including how to make Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent.
These conversations are expected to pop into your mind over the next three weeks.
Republicans are trying to move large parts of Trump's agenda through a process known as settlement where they bypass the Senate filibuster but must meet certain criteria. The budget resolution laid out the parameters of the final bill.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) showed that stretching in the future is crucial to the process.
“When we get back, this will start in earnest,” Johnson told reporters earlier this month, before taking a week's break. “We will work with the committee of the committee in both the leader and the lieutenant, both rooms, to commence the process and complete the resolution and advance the budget settlement.”
The issue now exists in the Senate where Republicans work to amend and block changes to the House budget resolution. The goal is to allow the lower chamber to vote for the compromised version before the end of the work period, which the Senate can follow after the next break.
The headline for the to-do list is to determine whether GOPs can use the “current policy baseline” Gimmick to win a bill to make tax cuts permanent.
Under this idea, current tax rates can be expanded in the future indefinitely without adding to the deficit. The 2017 tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year, and under the current scoring system, they will cost around $4.5 trillion over the next decade.
GOP leaders support this idea, but they must be called up with the senator. Republicans are scheduled to meet with Congress during the last three weeks of stint.
“Most people feel there's a good case at the baseline of their current policy, but that's definitely going to throw a wrench,” Sen. Tom Tillis (RN.C.) said of the possibility that the idea could be rejected.
Tillis, who will be re-election next year, added that he has not supported or substituting Congressional replacements to mark the bill at a planned level.
“As far as I'm concerned, it's nuking the filibuster. …That's ridiculous,” Tillis said. “All of these are the nuking versions of Filibuster.”
“I'm just not stepping down that slope,” he continues.
There are also questions as to whether the Republicans at Hardline House will be on board enough to use the pilot. Conservatives, especially those in the House Freedom Caucus, have asserted that the final settlement package must be deficit-neutral or cut, warning that they will not accept bills that include expenditures laid out to resolve budgets, even if the gimmick is being used.
“No, that's going to have an impact,” Rep. Ralph Norman (Rs.C.) told reporters last month when asked if he supported the current use of policy baselines.
“If that changes a lot of anything, I'm talking about small details, we have a solid group of nos, so we do that,” Norman added. “And what will he ask the President to be involved in the Senate when he gets involved here?”
That anxiety raises potential issues, as Johnson requires almost non-indifference to obtain a compromised budget solution through his slim majority. The last-hour lobbying from Trump has helped bring skeptical House Republicans on board for the past few months, including adopting budget resolutions.
The complex conversation emerges as another discrepancy between the two chambers as Republicans aim to do good in the proposed timeline for moving the settlement package.
Johnson initially wanted to get the final package inside the house in the first week of April. It became a Trump desk by Easter or Memorial Day.
Meanwhile, some Senate Republicans are paying attention to the August deadline to enact a package, a timeline where Johnson threw cold water last week.
“August is too late,” said the speaker. “We're going to move that ball much faster than that, and we'll talk about this with our colleagues and friends, and Republican leadership in the Senate.”
One of the things that could change the August deadline for Senate Republicans is whether the so-called X-Date to raise the debt cap will be faster than lawmakers expect. The House budget resolution includes provisions to address the debt cap.
The Congressional Budget Office says it plans to announce the X-Date by the end of the month.
Another major discussion member is set to surround Medicaid reductions.
“We have to look into other areas that aren't hurting some of these safety net programs, but we're definitely open to change and I think it's going to drive some people out of their comfort zone. That's going to be important,” Tillis said.
“All we're doing is looking at some of the fraud and abuses in the program,” he said. “It will have its own ups and downs by getting votes on one side, but then you could lose the other. It will be that constant pull and pull for the next three weeks.”
However, the idea is already beginning to surprise lawmakers. Sen. Lisa Markowski (R-Alaska) told state lawmakers last week she wouldn't support the Medicaid cut “which hurts our people or puts them in budget holes.”
Others have expressed concern about leadership in this aspect.
“Of course, from the perspective of West Virginia's huge participation,” Sen. Jim Justice (RW.Va.) told reporters last week, with nearly a third of electors who registered for Medicaid last year telling reporters.
“None of us wants to cut benefits,” he said. “But at the end of this whole process, if you haven't seen the methodology, some people might call a cut. It's going to improve that for everyone.”
As Republicans stare at the high stakes work period, they openly recognize that the path to passing legislation could be blurred as they overcome a series of troubling issues to enact a large portion of Trump's legislative agenda.
“The process will be ongoing,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY.) told reporters last week at the Capitol. “What we probably do is talk to each other, stare at each other, and ultimately it takes two months to unravel what we agreed to.”
