Republicans will be searching for a breakthrough when they travel to the White House on Tuesday to negotiate President Donald Trump‘s sweeping second-term agenda.
Congress has just three weeks to meet House Speaker Mike Johnson‘s (R-LA) self-imposed deadline to approve a framework that joins tax reform with Trump’s priorities on the border, defense, and energy. Yet, the House and Senate remain at odds on the contours of a deal that would allow them to begin drafting the legislation.
Congressional leaders must decide on the level of cuts to safety net programs such as Medicaid and if there’s enough GOP support to hike the debt ceiling in reconciliation, a budget process that allows Republicans to sidestep the Senate filibuster.
At the same time, there are serious questions over whether all of the president’s tax priorities can fit into the bill without an accounting trick that may or may not pass parliamentary muster.
The White House will host the “Big 6” on Tuesday to hash out those differences. This is the first working session since lawmakers returned from a weeklong recess. The meeting will bring congressional leaders and their top tax writers together with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump’s chief economic adviser, Kevin Hassett.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters on Monday that he was on board with the timeline laid out by Johnson, the latest sign that the House and Senate were converging on a reconciliation strategy.
If successful, that would mean both chambers approving a framework before lawmakers depart for the Easter recess next month. However, the narrow margins in both chambers will make executing that plan difficult.
Johnson agreed to the equivalent of $2 trillion in cuts to offset the bill’s price tag in negotiations with the conservative Freedom Caucus, which has what is, in effect, a legislative veto due to House Republicans’ two-seat majority.
However, Senate Republicans are generally unwilling to accept the level of Medicaid cuts necessary to achieve that benchmark. The entitlement is broadly popular in public polling and has millions of recipients in red states such as Kentucky and West Virginia.
The cross-chamber dynamic threatens to unravel a carefully crafted budget resolution the House adopted in February. The Freedom Caucus agreed to a $4 trillion hike in the federal debt ceiling, but only if accompanied by the $2 trillion in cuts.
In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) won’t vote for reconciliation under any circumstances if the debt ceiling is included. Thune can only afford to lose three GOP votes in a chamber he controls 53-47.
The impasse raises the likelihood that the debt ceiling will be dealt with separately as part of a deal with the Democrats on wildfire aid later this year.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are hoping to avoid the $4.5 trillion cap on tax reform in the House resolution using what’s known as a current policy baseline, which essentially treats an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as cost-free.
If the Senate parliamentarian allows it, that approach would allow Republicans to make the cuts permanent.
The complicated web of decision-making required for reconciliation has delayed the process for weeks. Originally, Senate Republicans wanted to divide Trump’s agenda into two parts: pass the border and defense portions now and handle tax reform later in the year.
Johnson seemingly won that battle when the House managed to approve its budget blueprint encompassing all of Trump’s priorities, to the surprise of Senate Republicans. Yet House Republicans have complained their blueprint has still not been brought to the Senate floor four weeks later.
On Monday, Johnson issued a statement along with House Republican leadership urging the Senate to act “as quickly as possible” on a compromise framework.
“We haven’t even gotten the hard work yet. It’s going to be very difficult,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), a member of the Senate Budget Committee.
For simplicity, Kennedy suggested Thune put the House resolution on the floor unchanged so it could be amended by rank-and-file lawmakers in a series of votes.
“I think we’re headed toward a vote-a-rama, and I think that’ll be a good thing,” Kennedy said.
WHAT IS A ‘VOTE-A-RAMA,’ THE WASHINGTON MARATHON LOATHED BY SENATORS?
Once both chambers approve a single budget resolution, the painstaking work of crafting the finer details of the actual legislation comes next. In 2017, when Republicans passed Trump’s first tax bill, minute details threatened to derail its passage at a time when House margins were larger.
Zach Halaschak contributed to this report.
