House Republicans will be in search of common ground this week, using a three-day retreat in Doral, Florida, to move past glaring disagreements over how to pass President Donald Trump‘s agenda.
GOP lawmakers will convene for their annual Issues Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami resort beginning on Monday and lasting until Wednesday. Trump is confirmed to appear as he and Republican leadership look to steer the House away from the infighting that has plagued it for the last two years.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) hopes to gain consensus and a “blueprint” on how the conference will approach budget reconciliation, a process that allows the GOP to bypass the filibuster in the Senate and quickly push through legislation composed of tax, energy, immigration, and national defense policies.
To get anything through the Republican-led House, Johnson can only afford to lose two votes once replacements for former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz are selected, as well as a successor for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) once she resigns after she is confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations.
“There’s a lot of issues with reconciliation of government funding that we’re working through,” Johnson said during a press conference last Wednesday. “These are healthy family discussions, not just inside the House Republican Conference but between the House and Senate Republicans. And that dialogue is going very well.”
Reconciliation will take more than just House GOP lawmakers coming together, as the process requires a budget resolution passed by both chambers — and House and Senate leaders have disagreed on the best strategy.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is among the Republicans arguing that the best path forward is to split priorities into two reconciliation bills, one focusing on border and immigration and the second focusing on tax cuts. Others, including Trump, have pressed for one “big, beautiful bill” to codify as much of the president’s agenda as possible.
Many hard-line conservatives, as they have for years, are emphatically demanding spending cuts now that Republicans hold a trifecta — and several proved during the last government shutdown fight they will vote against a Trump-backed proposal if it includes a debt ceiling hike without offsets.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a former chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said last Wednesday that he would attend the retreat, expressing hope that leadership will present the conference with a plan that satisfies the right wing of the party.
“I get tired of retreating, I want to advance,” Biggs quipped. “I’m going to the advance.”
Biggs said he hopes Republicans make progress on reconciliation and include the wishes of the Freedom Caucus. This month, the caucus released its “218” reconciliation proposal, a two-step approach they think can get 218 Republican votes by cutting spending and increasing the debt limit by approximately $4 trillion — leaving room for a second bill that would deal with tax cuts at a later date.
“I would like to see us move that way, and that would be awesome if we did, because then we would come back and would have that first reconciliation bill done, probably, in eight legislative days,” said Biggs, who has never supported a measure to raise the debt ceiling before.
The “218” proposal contrasts with the one preferred by Johnson and House GOP leadership, who have pushed for one bill to appear on Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.
The retreat will be a prime opportunity for leadership to lay out their plans and align the priorities of both conservatives and centrists. Blue-district Republicans will be looking for a compromise to SALT, a tax deduction that disproportionately helps taxpayers in states such as New York, New Jersey, and California.
The tax deduction was severely limited as part of the GOP’s 2017 tax law.
Ahead of the retreat, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) presented their preferred spending cuts in an all-member “listening session” last Wednesday.
Punchbowl News reported that committee chairs pitched between $2.5 trillion and $3 trillion in spending cuts and budget savings to fund the reconciliation legislation. For example, the House Energy and Commerce Committee flagged $2 trillion in possible cuts, including reforms to Medicaid and pharmacy benefit managers.
Republicans’ ultimate goal for reconciliation, whether it is one bill or two, is to pass it without Democratic support.
Since the historic ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, several key pieces of legislation under Johnson’s leadership have only passed because of Democratic support. With a razor-thin majority in the House after Waltz’s resignation, Republicans can currently only lose a single vote to pass legislation along party lines.
The willingness of Republicans to break with Trump during the spending bill battle last December indicates there could be more challenges when it comes to appropriations or the upcoming bill to extend expiring provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Government spending is also set to expire on March 14, with lawmakers waiting until the eleventh hour to strike past spending deals. Even with a House GOP majority last Congress, Republicans were unable to pass all 12 appropriations bills and had to rely on several short-term measures to avoid a government shutdown.
House and Senate GOP leaders have reportedly debated a large deal with Democrats to include government funding, California wildfire aid, and a debt limit hike, as senior Republicans worry the debt limit cannot be resolved in the reconciliation legislation.
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told reporters in a Thursday news conference that including the debt ceiling in reconciliation is a “nonstarter,” adding that Republicans have not reached out to him or other Democrats to kick-start conversations on spending.
“They’ve had no communications with us,” Jeffries said. “It’s not hard to find me. They know where I’m at. They know my number. I haven’t received a single call about a single one of these issues.”
