House Republicans’ “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill has a Texas-sized problem when it reaches the Budget Committee for a scheduled markup on Friday — if it gets to that stage.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is leading opposition to the package in its current 1,116-page form, and he has enough allies on the Budget panel to sink the measure after GOP Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma said Thursday they’d join Roy in voting “no.” There may be other GOP opponents as well, such as Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
And with Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, absent due to paternity leave, all House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas, can afford to lose is one vote on his side, assuming all Democrats vote against the package.
All of which puts Arrington in a tough spot, since he had little to do with writing the bill’s contents: That was the job of 11 other committees that finished marking up their portions late Wednesday. And the Budget Committee itself is barred by statute from making any changes to the bill. Its only job is to put the 11 pieces together into one bill and report it out.
Arrington told reporters Thursday afternoon he may have to postpone the markup, though that isn’t his first choice and he’s trying to avoid that.
“I haven’t given up yet, but there are concerns about having to get more information, and which would potentially delay this to next week,” he said.
Meetings were ongoing Thursday afternoon and were set to continue into the evening. After talking with GOP leadership and White House officials, Norman said he might change his mind and vote “yes” in the Budget Committee if he gets firm commitments about potential changes.
Punting to next week would conceivably risk Speaker Mike Johnson’s timeline of getting a bill passed in the House before the Memorial Day recess begins next Thursday. But Johnson, R-La., and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., each said the bill remains on track for the floor next week.
“We are still on path to pass this bill next week, to have it on the floor,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s always been the plan, and I don’t see anything that would impede that right now.”
He said the plan remains to take the bill to Budget on Friday and that he’s confident it will be approved.
Added Scalise: “We’ll have some final conversations tonight to get there … look, that’s the fun of this job.”
Workaround?
GOP leaders in theory have a workaround for their Budget problem: They can take the measure directly to the Rules Committee, which has to act anyway to set the terms of floor debate, and is where substantive changes can be made via a manager’s amendment.
But the problem with that approach is skipping the Budget Committee requirement to report the bill could be fatal to the package’s reconciliation privilege in the Senate, which allows it to bypass a filibuster.
So far, the measure appears to be largely living within budget constraints that Roy, Arrington and others negotiated as part of the budget resolution that established the framework for the filibuster-proof reconciliation bill.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that so far, the reconciled committees have come up with more than the $1.5 trillion in required 10-year savings, and that the pricey tax portion of the bill is remaining within its $4 trillion constraint.
But Roy and other conservative spending hawks don’t like the mix of policies in the bill, arguing they are “phony” and won’t solve long-term fiscal problems. Grothman, who wouldn’t comment until he had a chance to talk to Arrington, said the bill thus far doesn’t seem “sincere.”
Brecheen said he can’t go on incomplete information from the CBO and urged that the markup be delayed until panel members have more detail about the numbers.
Arrington said one problem is that without a full CBO score of the entire package, members can’t see overall budgetary effects, including how various provisions interact with each other and affect the costs.
“I’ll just tell you that there are folks that want to see some of the scores and they want to see how some of the policies coming out of these committees interact with each other, so that we can know that in good faith, the agreement or the structure of the framework we agreed to in the resolution has, and the targets therein, have been met,” Arrington said.
As Brecheen put it: “I’ve got to know in my conscience that the budget blueprint was met and not gamed.”
After some further discussions, Arrington later put out a statement walking back his previous comment about possibly delaying the markup.
“We did the hard work of setting real targets to restore fiscal sanity, and I’m confident we will have the votes in the Budget Committee tomorrow,” he wrote. “The Republican conference is working in good faith through a few scoring and policy clarifications. With something this big and beautiful, you’ve got to get it right.”
‘Couldn’t believe it’
Roy has been vocal about his concerns with the bill all week. “I can’t support the bill as it is,” he said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.
Roy said he “couldn’t believe it” when he learned that work requirements that would be imposed on Medicaid recipients wouldn’t begin until 2029. He also said too much of the program is “subsidizing blue states and massive expansion states at the expense of the non-expansion states and the vulnerable.”
Norman said Wednesday he was likewise concerned by the delay in implementing work requirements and said the federal government’s 90 percent share of the cost of Medicaid’s expansion from the Obama administration’s health care law should be lowered so that expansion states pay a greater share.
Several other conservatives have come out opposed to the 2029 start date for the work requirements, which the CBO has said would still cut more than $300 billion during the 10-year budget timeframe. Moving up that date would save over $50 billion more per year added.
“You can expect to move up” that date, Scalise said, but “we haven’t worked out those final details yet.”
‘SALT’ talks
That money seems likely to come into play as moderates from blue states push for a larger cap on state and local tax deductions. “If you do more on SALT, you have to find more in savings,” Johnson said after meeting with SALT caucus members and Freedom Caucus members, including Roy. “The metaphorical dials I am talking about, that’s what is involved here.”
Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said Thursday the current bill’s $30,000 cap, phased out above $400,000 in annual income, would benefit about 90 percent of the SALT caucus members’ constituents. He said it represents a compromise with many other members on his side of the aisle who’d prefer no SALT deduction at all, which they argue bails out profligate state and local governments.
“We want to make sure that the states that have really poor management, fiscal management, are not taking advantage of states that don’t,” said Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas. “I think it’s going to be tough” to get a higher cap.
“I think $30,000 is more than generous,” added Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. Neither his state nor Van Duyne’s tax income, so SALT is less of an issue for their constituents.
The current bill isn’t generous enough for a group of members from New York, New Jersey and California, who’ve asked to move up the cap to $62,000 for individual tax filers and $124,000 for married couples filing jointly.
But Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., who supports that figure, said it could cost between $700 and $800 billion; meanwhile Smith says there’s maybe only political appetite in the broader conference for another $50 billion.
One possible compromise in play is raising the cap to $40,000 for individuals and $80,000 for married couples, said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., a SALT caucus member who backs the current draft.
Clean energy, gun taxes
Another issue that needs to be resolved is the push and pull around the Ways and Means recommendation to cull some $515 billion worth of green energy tax credit expansions enacted in Democrats’ 2022 budget reconciliation package.
Moderates from swing districts like Jen Kiggans, R-Va. — whose race is rated a Toss-up by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales — want to preserve some of the existing policies, while conservatives like Brecheen are unhappy the rollbacks don’t happen sooner. Other members considered vulnerable in next year’s midterms, including SALT caucus members LaLota, Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Young Kim, R-Calif., signed onto a joint statement with Kiggans expressing their concerns this week.
Then there are more under-the-radar issues that always have potential to derail such a massive legislative package.
Among his other concerns, Clyde listed Second Amendment issues as a reason he’s voting “no” in the Budget Committee, should the markup stay on schedule.
Clyde, a gun store owner, said he’s unhappy the measure doesn’t go beyond its elimination of the $200 tax on silencer purchases. He wants the bill to get rid of all firearms taxes, including a $200 “making” tax and taxes on short-barrel rifles and shotguns and other armaments in the “any other weapon” category — basically any device that can discharge a shot, according to the U.S. Concealed Carry Association.
“This is unacceptable,” Clyde wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Jim Saksa, Sandhya Raman and Jacob Fulton contributed to this report.
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