A week into heavy negotiations over the budget reconciliation bill, Republicans are leaving town for the weekend with no clear consensus on how to both cut spending and preserve key social benefits.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith and Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie met with President Donald Trump Thursday before lawmakers left, in the hopes that he could help smooth over some of the deep divisions in the conference.
Those efforts to keep the president looped in left some members scratching their heads. Rep. Andrew Garbarino summed it up: “I don’t know why they would convince the president when they can’t even convince the majority of Congress.”
There are a number of issues that are splitting the conference. Moderate Republicans — including members who come from blue states, like Reps. Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Nick LaLota and Garbarino, to name a few — are drawing red lines on increasing the state and local tax deduction.
Separately, battleground district Republicans — which include many of these same members as well as Reps. Rob Bresnahan, David Valadao, Young Kim and Don Bacon — have been clear they will not accept what they deem as excessive Medicaid cuts to address government spending.
“I feel quite confident that leadership has an open door. They’ve been listening to us. We’ve had numerous meetings on SALT, on Medicaid and everything else,” LaLota told NOTUS. “Absolutely, they’re listening to us.”
These issues, coupled with members of the House Freedom Caucus who will only accept drastic spending cuts with the budget bill, are creating huge headaches for leadership as they figure out how they’ll pass the massive piece of legislation — key to Trump’s policy agenda — with just a tiny majority before the July Fourth holiday.
“Some of us haven’t laid down hard red lines on purpose because we believe we ought to let the process work and try to figure out how to lay in the plane,” Rep. Chip Roy, a Freedom Caucus member, told reporters Thursday. “But it has to cut deficits. Actual math, add up, non gimmicks, up front.”
Rep. Eric Burlison, another member of the Freedom Caucus, said he won’t accept anything below the $1.5 trillion benchmark in cuts the White House agreed to last month. He said he’s concerned House leadership is making too many concessions to the moderate wing of the caucus, which could risk losing Freedom Caucus support.
“My attitude towards my friends in the purple districts is, I get that you have a difficult time, but at the end of the day, politics has changed,” Burlison said, nodding to the inroads Trump made in swing districts.
“Every time we get to this point, like in 2017, we didn’t do what the base wanted, and as a result, people stop wanting to support a party that isn’t actually delivering any victories,” he said.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is weighing several options on Medicaid that would shift the share the federal government pays. The main target for cuts is an expansion of Medicaid passed under the Affordable Care Act, under which the federal government pays 90%, compared to the lower, sliding scale level for states under traditional Medicaid.
The most outspoken on Medicaid do have some concessions they are willing to accept, like instituting more frequent enrollment checks, cutting coverage for undocumented immigrants (though most undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal coverage) and instituting work requirements for able-bodied adults.
Beyond those cuts, things get more complicated. Committee members told NOTUS there’s still a long way to go between now and the markup scheduled for Wednesday.
“We haven’t come up with anything yet. I mean, I think it’s still early,” Rep. Gus Bilirakis said while leaving the committee’s meeting Thursday morning.
Lawler, who’s one of the blue-state Republicans leading the effort on increasing the SALT cap, said the group is willing to tank the legislation over the issue.
“The fact is that they need to address the cap on SALT as part of this bill, or there won’t be a bill, as I’ve said from the very beginning,” he told reporters. “So we’re working through it, and I suspect we’ll have progress shortly.”
Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is hoping they can kill the bill by getting enough Republicans to oppose it.
“Our objective is to find four Republicans to do the right thing, to stop the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, which will hurt families, hurt children, hurt seniors, hurt people with disabilities, hurt veterans and hurt everyday Americans,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a press conference Thursday.
He added: “And if Republicans are successful in jamming down an extreme budget into signature, into law, then they own that. It’s on them. They’re the ones that claim they have some big, bold, beautiful mandate.”
Energy and Commerce Committee members are adamant they’re still on track for a markup next Wednesday, even as big Medicaid details still need to be ironed out.
“We have not narrowed it down at all,” Rep. Buddy Carter, chair of the health subcommittee, said Thursday morning.
From the start, all corners of the Republican conference have been adamant they want to address waste, fraud and abuse. But when it comes to the details of the plan for Medicaid, of what reforms look like and where to cut, negotiations continue on.
“Waste is defined as anything I can get 217 of my fellow colleagues to agree on,” Carter said.
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Daniella Diaz is a reporter at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Riley Rogerson, a reporter at NOTUS, and Tinashe Chingarande, a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.