Congress OKs plan that promises to cut spending but doesn’t say how

In a pronounced victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the House of Representatives narrowly approved a Senate budget resolution on Thursday morning, clearing the path to begin work on President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.” The 216-214 vote came on the heels of a frustrating night for GOP leaders when as many as 20 members held up the budget’s consideration, citing doubts about the Senate’s commitment to cut government spending.

This morning’s vote followed negotiations with fiscal conservatives who demanded assurances from GOP leadership and the White House that they would support spending cuts of at least $1.5 trillion while advancing Trump’s policy priorities such as border security and tax cuts.

“What changed?” Roy said to reporters moments after the vote. “In the last 48 hours there have been three material developments. First, the White House committed very specifically to cuts. Second, we got a firm commitment from the speaker about making sure he maintains the framework we put in the House bill. And third, we have a strong statement from the Senate majority leader, John Thune, that he is committed to $1.5 trillion [in cuts].”

Even though those promises weren’t written into the budget yet, Roy voted for the resolution on Thursday morning. Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana were the only Republicans who voted against the resolution.

The budget resolution contains the plan passed by the Senate earlier this month. It sets a minimum of $4 billion in discretionary spending cuts (the spending Congress approves through legislation every year), calls for $2 trillion in reductions from mandatory spending, and sets the parameters needed to permanently extend Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Johnson and Thume held a news conference on Thursday morning, pledging to work together to reduce the government’s spending well beyond $4 billion.

“One of the principal objectives in our budget resolution—and in the House’s—is spending cuts,” Thune said. “We have got to do something to get the country on a more sustainable path and that entails taking a hard scrub of our government and figuring out where we can find those savings. The speaker has talked about $1.5 trillion; we have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum.”

When the Senate initially unveiled its plan, fiscal hawks expressed alarm at its lack of detail. The House passed a detailed budget in March, outlining $1.5 trillion in specific cuts in discretionary spending, but the Senate version simply promised to identify those cuts later on.

To members like Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., the $4 billion floor—without any other assurances—left the two versions irredeemably apart.

“Respectfully, the Senate is the lowest common denominator,” Burlison said on Tuesday when asked if he planned to support the resolution. “They tend not to have the appetite to do any of the hard things. So, if we can put in some kind of guardrails to make sure that whatever comes out of this has at least a certain minimum number of spending cuts, I think you’re going to get everybody on board.”

To address that skepticism, House leadership floated a procedural requirement to tie spending reductions to any final version of Trump’s one, big, beautiful bill. One option would have been to bake spending cut requirements into the rules of the House. Doing so would have prevented the consideration of any reconciliation package that included government spending reductions below the $1.5 trillion threshold. But members leaving the Capitol on Thursday morning told WORLD they felt that such a requirement was ultimately unnecessary.

Massie, the Kentucky Republican who cast one of the two Republican votes against the package, believes fiscal hawks got little more than a handshake deal.

“I hope it works out for them. The people that traded their vote for a promise—I think that's just salve for their conscience,” Massie said.

While the budget framework passed on Thursday doesn’t provide any additional detail on where those cuts could come from, Republican leaders argue it provides an open-ended starting point.

“The budget resolution is not a law,” Johnson said at his weekly news conference on Monday. “All this does is it allows us to begin drafting the actual legislation that really counts. Any final reconciliation bill has to include historic spending reductions that we included in our [budget] resolution. You’ve heard a commitment from us over and over that that will happen.”

Burlison, like many Republicans who expressed opposition to the bill, said he looks forward to implementing Trump’s agenda items. But he can’t ignore the promises he made on the campaign trail.

“I mean, I campaigned on fighting against the government and its increasing deficits,” Burlison told WORLD on Tuesday. “I can’t live with myself if I go back home, and I added more debt and deficits without any kind of corrections whatsoever,” Burlison said.

Burlison, who also spent hours in negotiations with Johnson on Wednesday, added that the swift change in plans spoke well of the speaker—and represented a significant victory for fiscal hawks in Congress.

“It’s a huge win,” Burlison said. “I think [Johnson] personally is a fiscal conservative, and I think he wants this, too.”

When the House reconvenes at the end of April, individual committees will begin drafting the language of Trump’s legislative package, following the designs of the budget resolution. House leaders said they hope to have a final version ready for a vote around Memorial Day.