The House GOP’s proposal for a massive conservative policy overhaul has already gotten a rocky reception from Republican lawmakers, and with their current majority, Republicans will need to vote in near lock-step to pass anything without Democratic support.
‘I think it’s probably going to have to be modified in some way before it comes to the floor,’ House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told Fox News Digital.
Other members of the GOP hardliner group also balked at the bill. Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., called it a ‘pathetic’ attempt at cutting spending.
‘We’ll still be accelerating towards a debt spiral,’ Burlison said.
House and Senate Republicans are working to use their majorities to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process. By reducing the threshold for passage in the Senate from two-thirds to a simple majority, which the House is already at, it allows the party in power to pass budgetary and fiscal legislation without help from the opposition.
The first step in the process is to advance a framework through the House and Senate budget committees, which then gives directions to other committees on how much funding they get to implement their relevant policy agendas.
The Senate Budget Committee approved its own plan on Wednesday night, while the House counterpart is poised to meet on their proposal Thursday morning.
It’s not immediately clear if that bill will pass, however. Four conservatives on the House Budget Committee – Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Josh Brecheen – did not commit to voting for the 45-page proposal backed by GOP leaders that was released on Wednesday morning.
Roy said he was ‘not sure’ if the legislation could advance on Thursday morning when asked by Fox News Digital.
‘We’ll see,’ Norman said when asked if the bill would pass out of committee.
Clyde and Brecheen similarly would not say how they felt about the proposal when leaving the speaker’s office on Wednesday afternoon.
If all four voted against the legislation, it would be enough to block the resolution from advancing to the House floor.
Other conservatives also expressed reservations. Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., told Fox News Digital, ‘I’m not super happy with it.’
‘It just doesn’t do enough to address fiscal cuts,’ Crane said.
The House’s 45-page bill would mandate at least a $1.5 trillion reduction in federal spending over the next 10 years, coupled with $300 billion in new spending for border security and national defense over the same period.
It would also raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion – something Trump had demanded Republicans deal with before the U.S. runs out of cash to pay its debts, projected to happen by the spring if Congress does not act.
And while hardline conservatives wanted deeper spending cuts written into the bill, Republicans on the House Ways & Means Committee are uneasy about the $4.5 trillion allocated toward extending Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 – which expires at the end of 2025.
‘Let me just say that a 10-year extension of President Trump’s expiring provisions is over $4.7 trillion according to CBO. Anything less would be saying that President Trump is wrong on tax policy,’ Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., told The Hill earlier this week.
A member of the committee, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital, ‘I have some concerns regarding Ways & Means not being provided with the largest amount to cover President Trump’s tax cuts — especially [State and Local Tax deduction (SALT)] relief and a tax reduction for senior citizens, which are both also priorities of mine.’
Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, said he had not read the legislative text but that Smith believed the $4.5 trillion figure was ‘about a trillion off from where we need to be in order to make it work.’
The resolution’s first big test comes at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday.
Republicans are aiming to use reconciliation to pass a broad swath of Trump’s priorities, from more funding for law enforcement and detention beds at the U.S.-Mexico border to eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages.
The Senate’s plan would advance border, energy, and defense priorities first while leaving taxes for a second bill.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called that plan a ‘nonstarter’ this week, however. House leaders are concerned that leaving tax cut extensions for a second bill could allow those measures to expire before lawmakers reach an agreement.