Republican senators are addressing the wide range of opinions within the party on strategy and policy regarding incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune's (R.S.D.) ambitious proposal to address President-elect Trump's policy agenda. It warns that it faces discrepancies.
Republican senators will provide funding to complete construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, increase the number of officers hired at Customs and Border Protection, and provide funding to better absorb the flow of migrants. They generally agree that the budget adjustment bill should be moved quickly. It goes beyond borders.
There is also broad Republican support for including legislation to strengthen domestic energy protection in the first budget bill.
However, the proposal to convert a large portion of discretionary defense spending into mandatory spending and incorporate it into a budget reconciliation package is likely to be met with resistance from some members of the Appropriations Committee and from fiscal conservatives concerned about the fiscal impact. is expected. deficit.
“You have to look at that. Traditionally, there has been very little mandatory funding for defense. There is no doubt that the large increase in mandatory spending is responsible for the large increase in the budget deficit. There is no room,” incoming Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said after a Senate Republican meeting at the Library of Congress. Thun announced his plans.
“When you move spending from discretionary to mandatory, you circumvent the scrutiny that the appropriations committees have. Generally speaking, I think that's a problem,” she said.
Including a “plus-up” in defense spending in the budget adjustment bill may run into opposition from fiscal conservatives, especially House conservatives who want to rein in the Pentagon's budget.
“I can guarantee you that they don't have the votes for it. It's a very close margin in the House and Senate, and I'm sure there are some Republicans who don't want to move the largest amount of federal funding into the mandatory category.” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). The Appropriations Committee discussed moving some defense spending to the mandatory category.
There is disagreement within the Republican Party over the size of the initial budget reconciliation proposal, with some Republican senators calling for additional funding beyond the border security, energy and defense proposals Thune presented at Tuesday's rally. I'm asking you to.
Some Senate conservatives have pushed the initial settlement bill beyond spending on the border wall, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to include some of the policy reforms included in the House-passed Secure Borders Act. We would like to expand this to include the Department.
The Senate's Byrd rules require that any legislation included in a budget reconciliation package have a direct effect on spending, revenue, or the deficit, but some conservatives have advocated strengthening refugee laws or reducing the flow of immigrants. argue that other policy reforms could have a significant impact on fiscal deficits. Those economic concerns.
A person familiar with Tuesday's discussions said Senate Republicans will test the limits of budget reconciliation rules, with Democrats pushing the envelope by significantly increasing spending in the $1.9 trillion 2021 American Rescue Plan. He pointed out.
Other Senate Republicans want to move aggressively to “demilitarize'' the federal government and drastically cut federal spending, which will total a whopping $6.1 trillion in 2023.
“There are a million ways things could have played out,” said one Republican senator.
He said the first settlement “arguably needs to include more” than border security and defense spending, interspersed with reforms to expand energy production.
Senate Republicans are deciding how far to go to reorganize the federal government, and whether they should address that ambitious project in the first round of reconciliation, or in the second round, which focuses on extending Trump-era tax cuts that are set to expire. We are debating whether we should work on this.
A person familiar with the discussions at Tuesday's meeting said senators had reached an agreement on whether to pursue deep federal spending cuts and civil service reform in either the first or second budget reconciliation package. He said no.
The budget reconciliation package, which focuses on the second tax cut, faces unique challenges.
The biggest challenge is the bill's extreme complexity, which would increase the federal deficit by an estimated $4.6 trillion over 10 years compared to current law when the Trump tax cuts expire at the end of next year.
Incoming Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) urged Republicans to calculate the fiscal impact based on “current policy,” which incorporates current tax rates into budget proposals, and to calculate the cost of the bill. They called for a new approach to scoring. baseline.
But some House Republicans want to extend the Trump tax cuts based on “current law,” which assumes those tax cuts expire at the end of next year.
Calculating the cost of next year's tax package based on the “current law” baseline yields budget projections that increase the deficit by nearly $5 trillion over the next decade.
Some House Republican leaders fear it will shock fiscal conservatives in the conference. Some of them have floated the idea of extending the Trump tax cuts for four years to significantly reduce the expected cost of the bill.
Republican lawmakers are also divided over whether to extend next year's tax package beyond the provisions of the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Mr. Trump's allies in the Senate Republican conference have included Mr. Trump's campaign proposal to shield service industry workers' tip income and Social Security benefits from federal taxes, a proposal that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. I'm thinking about it.
According to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, exempting tip income from taxes could cost between $100 billion and $200 billion over 10 years, and shielding Social Security benefits from taxes could reduce fiscal costs over 10 years. The deficit could increase by $1.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion.
Republican senators who attended Tuesday's meeting said discussions about how to structure the two settlements for next year are still in the preliminary stages.
Incoming Senate Republican John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said, “There was extensive discussion about all the things we want to accomplish and the opportunities to accomplish them. We're going to get it all done.” Ta.
President Trump convened a gathering of Senate Republicans on Tuesday, reminding them of his victories in all seven battleground states last month and urging them to act with that mission in mind.
“He was excited about the win,” Barrasso said of Trump's comments at the news conference. “We have a mission and an opportunity to do the kinds of things we've been talking about in our campaign in terms of lowering prices, in terms of borders, in terms of getting America back on track.”
