Congress

Vance fails to quell fiscal hawk concerns about GOP reconciliation plans

Published

2 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Vice President JD Vance did little Wednesday afternoon to calm fiscal hawks concerned about House GOP leadership’s current plans to ram through a party-line policy and military spending bill that would not be fully paid for.

Inside a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Vance pressed House Republicans to vote in favor of a fiscal blueprint for a $95 billion package, which the House Budget Committee is scheduled to mark up Thursday morning and which Speaker Mike Johnson wants the full chamber to advance next week.

He framed the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process as a must-do endeavor, stressing it was the best vehicle for passing some elements of the GOP elections overhaul bill known as the SAVE America Act — according to five people granted anonymity to share details from inside the room.

“The president’s priority is to actually get the SAVE America Act passed,” Vance told reporters following the meeting.

He also told House Republicans in the meeting that his White House-based task force on fraud was already tackling waste in government programs to pacify members angry with leadership’s decision not to address the issue as part of reconciliation.

But many fiscal conservatives were not convinced. GOP leaders will also only be able to put a watered-down version of the SAVE America Act into the bill in the form of grants to encourage states to adopt strict voter ID and citizenship laws, to comply with the strict rules governing reconciliation.

Budget Committee Republican Chip Roy of Texas left the meeting with Vance insisting “there’s more work to do” on the budget framework before it has the support to advance out of committee, let alone on the floor.

“I think the stupidest thing to do would be to try to jam it through committee when you’ve got bigger problem[s] on the House floor,” Roy added, “and I think that might be the current state of affairs.”

House Republican leaders unveiled a budget framework Wednesday for a bill containing funding for the military conflict with Iran, farm aid and election administration — with no spending cuts or plans to pay for even part of the package. It was a blow to deficit hawks who have heard Johnson for months tout that another party-line package could include spending cuts and ways to target hundreds of billions in alleged fraud across social programs.

But Johnson changed course this week, under intense pressure to advance any reconciliation package that would include new Pentagon funding plus appease President Donald Trump’s demands for passage of the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate.

“We’ve been lied to,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said Wednesday, before the Vance meeting. “We were told we were going to do a ‘skinny reconciliation,’ and then … we were going to put … a lot of our key priorities in his reconciliation package.”

He was referring to the immigration enforcement-only reconciliation bill congressional Republicans passed in June to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol.

“I think that the attitude that we don’t want to have the debate or the argument by opening up certain committees to the Senate is taking the weak posture, weak approach,” Burlison continued. “So to me, there’s not enough meat on the bone for me to want to support this.”

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), asked if he had concerns the bill would add to the deficit, replied as he left the meeting with Vance: “I think we all do.”

Some Republicans believe they can still force GOP leaders to add spending offsets into the package.

“I think it still has some amount of fluidity,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), “and I just need to see it in its final form.”

Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that while talks were ongoing on the topic of pay-fors, it was proving a challenge to identify politically palatable offsets. The main goal, he added, is to get a GOP elections overhaul bill to Trump’s desk by any means necessary.

“The Senate ultimately is where we have some challenges, and that’s been the holdup for SAVE America from the beginning,” Scalise said in an interview Wednesday. “And the real focus of this is getting SAVE America to the Senate and then ultimately to the president’s desk.”

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) had a message for dissatisfied holdouts.

“That play’s been called,” he said of GOP leadership’s decision to forge ahead with a narrow reconciliation measure. “It’s time to put up or shut up.“

Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

Congress

In seismic shift, more than 100 House Democrats vote to end Israel aid

Published

3 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Nearly half of House Democrats voted to cut off aid to Israel Wednesday, underscoring a seismic shift in political support for the longtime U.S. ally.

The amendment to a State Department spending bill would have eliminated $3.3 billion in funding, and thanks to strong Republican support for the Jewish state, it failed 314-104. But the vote served as a moment of reckoning for House Democrats who have had to confront years of voter outrage about Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza.

“There’s also a real sense that the status quo cannot continue,” the House’s No. 2 Democrat, Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, said in an interview before voting for the amendment.

The vote came after months of contentious primary elections where progressive candidates toppled incumbent after incumbent by publicly eschewing spending from pro-Israel groups and promising to recast America’s relationship with the nation.

The scale of Democratic support for the amendment Wednesday was an acknowledgement of the grassroots fury that has reshaped the political landscape inside the party — a transformation that has rapidly accelerated under President Donald Trump and his close ties to the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Just over two years ago, only 37 House Democrats — mostly on the party’s hard-left flank — voted for a similar bid to crack down on U.S. for Israel.

This time, a much broader swath of Democrats came along — 103 of the 211 members voting Wednesday, plus another 10 who voted “present.”

The supporters included Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the esteemed former speaker, who said in a statement that she reluctantly backed the amendment because Americans “are rightly demanding an end to a perpetual cycle of war, and the Netanyahu government cannot maintain its current course.”

While the amendment in question was introduced by an isolationist Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the vast majority of the support it received on the floor came from a divided Democratic Party.

The split went to the very top.

Clark’s support for the measure broke with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who blasted Massie’s amendment as a poorly constructed effort that could end humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

The still-sizable Democratic opposition plus the “no” votes of 215 Republicans was enough to sink the measure. But even Jeffries and other top Democrats allied with him who rejected the amendment acknowledged this week that the U.S. needs to recalibrate its relationship with Israel.

“I think that’s the goal — making sure that Israel lives up to standards that we have for other countries,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “That’s appropriate.”

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) voted “present” but said in an interview that he would favor a more carefully targeted effort to end military aid to Israel “and certainly condition even the defensive aid.”

He was torn, he said, because he does not “want to cut off all cooperation with Israel, all support for peace building, civil society, a diplomatic presence, things that support the Palestinian people.”

With scores of members now on the record about their opposition, and a growing contingent of Israel skeptics poised to join the House next term, fractious Israel politics will be an ongoing challenge for Jeffries next term.

The minority leader represents a significant orthodox Jewish community in his Brooklyn congressional district and has touted his strong support for Israel. The amendment episode previewed how he plans to handle the divide.

Jeffries hosted two lengthy private caucus meetings where lawmakers hashed out their disagreements and eventually advised members to “vote their conscience” during a Tuesday meeting. In a “Dear Colleague” letter he said a “meaningful change in direction is needed” especially as a 10-year security assistance agreement signed by former President Barack Obama expires later this year.

Whether his approach will satisfy incoming ultraprogressive members, some of whom have not committed to backing him as leader, remains to be seen. But left-leaning House Democrats celebrated the vote tally — and leadership’s agree-to-disagree tack — as a massive victory.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, urged his colleagues to support the amendment in his own Tuesday letter, saying that the “American people are crying out for an end to US tax dollars subsidizing Israel’s military.”

It wasn’t just progressives, though, who voted for the amendment. In a sign of the omnipresent Israel politics dominating this midterm cycle, the hawkish Rep. Seth Moulton — who is challenging progressive Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts — voted also “yes.”

“We simply cannot continue to condone Netanyahu’s actions that are against our moral conscience and our own national security interests,” he said in a statement.

Rep. Lauren Underwood — a leader of House Democrats’ campaign arm who flipped her Illinois seat blue in 2018 — voted for the amendment as well. So did Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, a member of leadership, and Rep. Valarie Foushee of North Carolina, who weathered a primary challenge this term from the left.

“We’ve all grown frustrated with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s actions,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) — who has previously backed Israel aid but voted for the Massie amendment — said. “His actions have really, I think, motivated a lot of the yes votes.”

Congress

Senators will ‘insist on offsets’ in reconciliation bill, Ron Johnson says

Published

5 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee said he expects a fight over paying for a new party-line spending bill as House Republicans move forward with a plan that does not offset $95 billion in proposed spending with cuts elsewhere.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is expected to soon inherit the Budget gavel from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham — and with it a key role in managing the budget reconciliation process Republicans intend to use to sidestep Democratic opposition to their latest legislative proposals.

Johnson noted in an interview Wednesday that he has long been one of the Senate’s foremost deficit hawks and “I’ve got other members on the committee that also insist on offsets.”

“That’s the reality that I’ll have to deal with as chairman,” Johnson said. “You know, [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune’s going to have to deal with it. The White House has to deal with it. The House has to deal with it, as well.”

The House and Senate Budget committees play a key role in drafting and advancing fiscal blueprints that pave the way for party-line reconciliation bills, and Johnson could use his influence to force changes to the House proposal. He told reporters Monday, ahead of the House rollout, that identifying offsetting cuts “would certainly be one of my objectives.”

But that risks putting him at odds with Thune, who has voiced concerns that pursuing spending cuts to health care or other sensitive programs could blow back on vulnerable members just before the midterms.

The Senate Budget Committee, however, is stacked with fiscal hawks who will likely want to pay for at least part of the bill.

House GOP leaders are contending with their own band of fiscal hawks, who are upset over the lack of pay-fors included in the spending plan released Wednesday.

Johnson will come face-to-face with some of them Wednesday evening, saying that he would meet with House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) as well as the House Freedom Caucus.

Congress

Cole heads to Camp David to talk defense funding

Published

5 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole is headed to the president’s retreat at Camp David as lawmakers assemble a third party-line package that falls short of Donald Trump’s ambitious defense spending target.

Cole (R-Okla.) said he is headed to the Maryland outpost Thursday where he expects to have conversations about defense funding levels and “general things.” Cole was unsure of the full attendance list for the meeting.

Cole acknowledged Wednesday that the House GOP budget resolution released Wednesday morning comes in far under the $350 billion Trump has been calling for on Pentagon spending. The House framework included just $73 billion for defense and intelligence.

Trump has proposed a record-breaking $1.5 trillion for the overall defense budget for the coming fiscal year, and the party-line bill is seen as key to reaching that goal without needing Democratic support.

“I think they’re probably just dealing with political reality there. I haven’t gotten an explanation from them yet,” Cole said Wednesday afternoon. “I am headed out tomorrow to Camp David for a quick discussion and I’m sure that’ll be dealt with then.”

A group of select Budget Committee Republicans, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and White House officials held private meetings at Camp David earlier in the week to nail down a plan for the slimmed-down $95 billion package. Trump was not in attendance.

Budget Committee Republicans were summoned by White House officials and boarded a bus Sunday for the presidential retreat for a 24-hour marathon sprint of budget talks.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.