One big, beautiful price tag

WASHINGTON—An upcoming House vote will test how comfortable Republicans are with a budget framework that spells out spending increases without clearly defining how to pay for them.

As of Tuesday morning, as many as 15 fiscal conservatives in the House were a firm “no” on a budget resolution the Senate passed late last week. House approval of the resolution is the next step to advance President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” to enact his policy priorities such as border security and tax cut extensions.

The Senate GOP spending plan proposes cutting existing expenses by $4 billion—an amount less than 1% of the $1.5 trillion in total cuts that the House called for in its own budget resolution. to fund the president’s priorities such as border security and tax cut extensions. House Republican leaders are trying to win conservative support for the Senate’s plan by promising they can make deeper budget cuts as Congress works to finalize the bill sometime around Memorial Day.

Republicans like Rep. Keith Self of Texas said they don’t trust the Senate to fill in the blanks later when it comes to budget cuts.

“We have no confidence in the Senate to do anything other than reach the lowest point they can on savings and the highest point on spending,” Self said on Tuesday.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, supports the Senate resolution and plans to vote for it on Wednesday. He agrees that more meaningful cuts can come down the road.

“This is not the real fight. The real fight is when we actually have a bill,” Cole said. “I think the president is with us; I think he wants reasonable reductions as well.”

Other members want the Senate to make up-front assurances about future cuts. To members like Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas., the lack of a concrete plan in the Senate’s budget resolution isn’t reassuring.

“It might be $100 billion; it might be $500 billion—it might be a trillion. That’s the problem. We don’t know,” Roy said. “They haven’t put any guardrails on their budget. I’m not going to support it.”

With a slim Republican House majority, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can only afford to lose three votes if he plans to pass the budget without Democratic support. As many as 15 members voiced opposition to the plan on Tuesday morning, just a day before House leaders were hoping to vote on the resolution.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said the conference would depend heavily on the president to close the gap on the needed votes.
“The president has been our biggest advocate to get this done,” Scalise told WORLD.