President-elect Trump and Republican senators battled over the best strategy to move his top agenda items, including border security and tax cuts, during a two-hour meeting at the Capitol Wednesday night. He largely resisted pleas from senators to split the issue. Split into two large bills.
Many Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.) and Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R.S.C.), are among the first to tackle a package that includes border security, energy supplies, and defense. I argued that it should.
They argued it was better to pass these priorities as soon as possible before getting bogged down in the complex challenge of extending the expiring 2017 Trump tax cuts.
But Trump, siding with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who believes that approach would increase his influence over the chamber's corrupt members, has refused to allow Congress to address key parts of his agenda. He strongly expressed his hope that it would be passed as one bill.
One Republican senator who was present said Trump had “repeatedly” expressed a desire to introduce the bill.
That led to a “long back-and-forth” discussion with Graham, who argued for the merits of passing two bills: one focused on border security, energy and defense, and the other focused on tax cuts.
The more Mr. Graham argued, the more Mr. Trump became convinced that he would prefer to move one bill instead, according to senators who were present.
“Mr. Graham had a long back-and-forth, and the longer Mr. Graham spoke, the more resolute Mr. Trump became,” said a person familiar with the conversation. “He said doing two was a bad idea and would reduce our leverage. Let's do one.”
“He was pressed many times and kept pushing back and saying, 'I want it,'” the source added.
Thune ultimately implored President Trump to remain open to the idea of passing two bills based on budget reconciliation. This is a ploy that circumvents the Senate filibuster and allows Republicans to pass legislation without Democratic votes. However, he still expressed a preference for one bill.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Hoeven (R-Texas) also made passionate arguments for passing two budget reconciliation bills this year.
Mr. Cruz warned that Republicans risked disaster if they put all their eggs in one basket.
He said there was a “very real risk” that a major bill “would not pass a vote.”
“I think there's a much greater risk of failure if you do that,” he said of the one-bill approach. “We cannot afford to fail. The stakes are too high to fail.”
“There was broad agreement, if not complete unanimity, in that room on that,” Cruz said. “I think we had a very positive and substantive conversation and I think he completely listened to us.”
Hoeven said the idea is to get the bill focused on border security, energy and defense off the ground in the Senate, giving the House a chance to “seize the bill” if the tax bill stalls due to disagreements in the House. He said he proposed.
“He's been clear: He wants a big, beautiful bill,” Hoeven said. “I said, let’s set this up as a horse race and see what goes better and faster.”
“When I suggested horse racing, he said, 'Let's take a look,'” he added. “Lindsay started that whole line. [of discussion,] Then the tune explained a little more and Ted Cruz came back to it. We talked about it quite a bit. ”
Senate Republicans are worried that House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-Louisiana) plan to combine President Trump's biggest agenda items, including border security, an energy bill, tax cuts and deficit reduction, into a single bill is too big. The government said it was concerned that many businesses could be at risk of collapsing under the policy. own weight.
A second senator, who requested anonymity, warned that the plan could backfire because “anyone would be naturally suspicious of one big huge bill for any reason.” did.
“Similar skepticism will play into this, and President Trump will become restless in trying to get things done faster to show positive results, especially on the border issue,” the senator said. A large bill could do that,” the senator predicted.
House Republican strategists believe a combination of tax and border security provisions would have a better chance of passing the House. Because if recalcitrant rank-and-file Republicans question some of the tax provisions, there will be more pressure to support them. or the absence of certain tax provisions, such as increased limits on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
But Senate Republicans aren't buying that argument.
“That's ridiculous,” a Senate Republican aide said, arguing that the tax cuts would have enough momentum this year without paralleling border security or energy reform.
“Taxes have their own momentum, and if we do nothing we'll end up with $4.5 trillion in tax increases. Are you going to be the Republican that supports $4.5 trillion in tax increases later this year?” the aide said. .
“Trump's energy and support is near the border, and it is critical that he achieves early victory in his mandate,” the official added.
Senate Republican Leader John Barrasso of Wyoming reiterated Wednesday afternoon that Senate Republican leadership wants to pass two budget reconciliation bills. One focuses on border security, energy reform, and defense spending, and the other focuses on tax cuts and fiscal reform.
“We all want to reach the same result. I think there is great value in both.[-bill] Because we can do the border, energy and U.S. security pieces more quickly,” he told reporters.
Barrasso, a veteran of the difficult Senate debates surrounding President Trump's first major tax package, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, said digging into the tax code is “a process that takes more time than doing border, energy or national policy. “There is a possibility,” he warned. safety. “
“Delaying border security is a dangerous idea,” Graham warned earlier this week.
Thune revealed the Senate's preferred strategy of moving President Trump's agenda into two separate reconciliation bills at a Senate Republican meeting in early December.
“I prefer Tune's approach,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, RN.D., said early Wednesday.
“The immediate crisis is the border,” he said, noting that the surge in the number of nearly 10 million migrants crossing the border during President Biden's term was a top issue in his presidential campaign.
“That's the most obvious point: There's a crisis at the border. Right now, there's no tax policy in place because the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act doesn't expire at the end of the year.” “That is the most obvious rationale for the Thun plan.”
Cramer also argued that legislation to expand domestic energy production by opening up new land to oil and gas drilling could be introduced “quickly.”
President Trump and Republican senators also discussed the president's plan to finance much of his agenda with massive tariff increases. Republican senators said there was no serious backlash in the chamber against Mr. Trump's tariff push, although some senators feared it was bad economic policy.
“The main payoff I heard there was talk about big, beautiful tariffs on everything. I think that's interesting because some of the people who didn't support tariffs in the past , now we're saying, 'Europe has a value-added tax, and we should do the same,' said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
“If you go back a few years, we all thought value-added tax was a terrible idea. One of the reasons we can beat Europe is because we have this terrible value-added tax,” he said.
“I still don't think tariffs are a good idea,” he said. “International trade has made the whole world incredibly rich.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said the senator and President Trump also discussed the president-elect's recent thoughts on Canada becoming the 51st state.
“Oh, that's good,” Marin said jokingly. “We talked about it, and it was interesting.”
