Republican congressional leadership is now working in overdrive to write parts of their massive reconciliation bill and hold the necessary markups to get it passed by Memorial Day weekend.
It won’t be easy.
After wrapping a meeting Monday with the six Republicans in charge of reconciliation — including Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave reporters a slightly more conservative timeline.
“We’ve got three legs to the president’s economic agenda — trade, tax and deregulation — and we hope that we can have this tax portion done by Fourth of July,” he said.
Thune told reporters Monday that Memorial Day may be doable for the House, but the Senate would take longer to make sure the package is compliant with Senate Byrd rule for reconciliation.
“We’ve got our work to do here,” Thune said. “We’ve got Byrd to comply with and we’ve got to work through with our members to have all the necessary opportunities for them to hear what’s being considered and discussed and then to ask questions and get to a comfortable place with it. So it’s not going to happen overnight.”
Johnson stressed how pivotal the next few weeks would be.
“This next few weeks is going to be critical. We’re working on the big, beautiful bill, the reconciliation bill,” he told reporters. “I think it’s going to be a great piece of legislation. It’s going to solve a lot of problems. It’s going to be turbo fuel, a turbo boost for the economy.”
Republicans on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the panel responsible for coming to $880 billion in cuts, are meeting Monday to hash out legislation details, one person familiar with the meeting told NOTUS. The biggest debate on the panel is how to address Medicaid spending, a major issue for vulnerable Republicans who are against cuts to the social benefit.
“There’s been no decisions made — zero. That’s why we’re doing this,” committee member Rep. Cliff Bentz told NOTUS on his way to the meeting, which is expected to go late into the night.
“We’ve been talking and talking and talking and talking, and tonight we’re going to get down to specific proposals. Let’s see if there’s support for them,” Bentz said. “But no decisions made yet.”
Energy and Commerce is set to hold its formal markup on the cuts May 7. Moderate Republicans in the House and Senate have maintained from the start they will not support any plan that cuts benefits to individuals; they only want to see plans that address waste, fraud and abuse in government spending and institute work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks for social assistance programs. Budget experts have maintained those plans alone won’t get the committee to $880 billion, even with cuts to energy programs included.
Some Republicans have suggested adjusting the amount of federal funds for Medicaid and shifting the costs to the states by adjusting the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage. But just like with direct cuts to benefits, several Republican senators and House Republicans from states and districts that rely on Medicaid have said that an FMAP adjustment is a red line.
“Some of these changes are very much the devil-is-in-the-details,” Rep. Ryan Mackenzie told NOTUS.
The freshman frontliner has been vocal from the start about Medicaid and won’t support cuts to benefits for vulnerable individuals.
Mackenzie, alongside other members not on the committee, are waiting to see what awaits, from the final dollar amounts to details on the plan.
“We’re still waiting until they do their markup so we can see that actual language,” he said. “You really have to see the actual language on what’s being proposed.”
Medicaid is likely the most significant hurdle. But there are other details the committees are set to iron out soon.
House Judiciary Committee Republicans have released their portion of the reconciliation bill that would beef up border security — a major goal for Republicans in this legislation.
The panel’s portion would fund 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, more detention capacity and require new fees that would pay for resources for the relevant agencies. The panel’s portion of the bill would — for the first time in US history — add a $1,000 asylum application fee, as well as a $1,000 fee for individuals paroled into the U.S., $3,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children, $2,500 penalty for sponsors of unaccompanied children who fail to appear in court and a $550 fee for work permits.
Republicans have argued for months that they would find ways to not only pay for the cost of the reconciliation bill enacting Trump’s tax, energy and border security goals, but also use the bill to deter illegal immigration.
Democrats, meanwhile, plan to use this stretch of time to highlight what they believe is at stake with this landmark legislation. Democratic leadership has made it clear they plan to highlight what they view as bad policy in the massive budget bill.
“House Democrats are going to make clear over the next few weeks what’s at stake with this reckless Republican effort to jam their extreme budget down the throats of the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Monday. “Will a handful of House Republicans step up on behalf of the American people and prevent the largest Medicaid cut in American history?”
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Daniella Diaz is a reporter at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz and Helen Huiskes are NOTUS reporters and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows. Ursula Perano contributed reporting.