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Capitol agenda: Quiet standoff over Trump’s agenda

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Congress is back. Lawmakers have three weeks to make major progress on their behemoth party-line bill.

Hill Republicans are focused now on advancing President Donald Trump’s border, energy and tax priorities. Speaker Mike Johnson has set an aggressive goal of finalizing a budget blueprint with the Senate and getting it passed in the House by the week of April 7 — softening his earlier ambitions to pass the final bill by Easter. The budget is necessary for enacting Trump’s domestic agenda along party lines through a process known as reconciliation.

Efforts to resolve differences between the House and Senate GOP budget resolutions are going nowhere fast. Instead, House and Senate Republicans are mired in a blame game over who is slowing down the process.

There are several major hurdles for the House side: Republicans still need to determine how much they can slash from social safety-net programs. They also need to figure out how to extend existing tax cuts while providing new tax breaks Trump has promised, all without blowing a hole in the deficit — plus agree to a fix for the state and local tax deduction.

“How can we be moving quickly when some of those foundational questions haven’t been settled?” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis asked.

Senate GOP leaders have been careful to not provide any specific timeline on Trump’s agenda — though a person granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the goal is to adopt a modified budget resolution in the next three weeks. House Republicans are waiting on the Senate to agree on a fiscal outline before they draft any reconciliation bill, leaving the two chambers at a standstill.

Senate Republicans have been reluctant to hold another marathon vote series on a conforming budget resolution unless they are sure their House colleagues can actually pass a reconciliation bill with the $2 trillion in cuts Johnson promised to his hard-liners, according to three Republicans who were granted anonymity to detail their internal discussions.

“Probably what we are going to do is talk each other to death, stare at each other and then eventually, you know, confuse the issue so much that it takes two months to unravel what we agree to,” GOP Sen. Rand Paul said.

What else we’re watching:

  • Rules meeting: House Rules will have a hearing at 4 p.m. Monday on an education bill that places new requirements on universities to report foreign gifts or contracts and two bills to overturn Biden-era energy standards for refrigerators and walk-in coolers under the Congressional Review Act. The House is set to bring those bills to a floor vote later this week.
  • Judge impeachment alternatives: House Republicans are working through different options to appease Trump’s request for Judge James Boasberg’s impeachment. Rep. Brandon Gill’s bill to impeach Boasberg had 16 co-sponsors as of Sunday night. Meanwhile, GOP leaders are eyeing other options outside of impeachment, including Rep. Darrell Issa’s bill that would limit lower court judges’ ability to issue far-reaching injunctions, as we reported last week.
  • X-date projection: The Bipartisan Policy Center predicted today that the United States will default on its $36 trillion national debt sometime between mid-July and October if Congress does not act — the first public prediction of when a so-called X-date could occur. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office plans to release its debt limit forecast on Wednesday.

Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

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Congress

GOP, Democrats blast Vought for holding back cash: ‘You don’t have the authority to impound’

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Senators from both parties chided the Trump administration Thursday for continuing to withhold funding Congress has approved, more than a year after the White House first froze billions of dollars for temporary “review.”

During White House budget director Russ Vought’s testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) scolded the OMB chief for not sending hundreds of millions of dollars the Trump administration is supposed to give states throughout the year to support community services aimed at reducing poverty.

“Congress has appropriated money, and you don’t have the authority to impound it,” Grassley said about the more than $810 million Congress appropriated this year for the Community Services Block Grant program.

That program helps states fund anti-poverty services such as transportation, education and nutrition assistance that serve more than 9 million people each year.

Grassley told Vought that lawmakers “are not getting any answers” as to why the Trump administration hasn’t sent states their quarterly funding from the program. “I want those quarterly allotments released,” Grassley said.

While Vought did not directly address Grassley’s comments, he said at a different point during the hearing that “we have not impounded a single thing.”

Other senators, including Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), lamented federal dollars being withheld for the fund that provides capital to small banks and credit unions in underserved areas. For months lawmakers from both parties have pushed back against Trump’s plans to eliminate that program, the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

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Congress

FISA extension vote delayed

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House GOP leaders are pushing back the planned 3:15 p.m. procedural vote related to the bill extending a key spy power due to expire in four days.

Leaders are continuing to negotiate with hard-liners to come up with a deal that can pass the chamber.

No new time has been set for the rule vote.

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Senate Republicans ‘syncing’ immigration funding plan with House GOP

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday that GOP leaders want to make sure Republicans in both chambers are aligned as they move ahead with a party-line plan for immigration enforcement funding.

The South Dakota Republican told reporters he hopes the Senate will adopt a budget framework “by middle-to-the-end of next week,” the first step to unlocking the filibuster-skirting power to clear a package of up to $75 billion for ICE and Border Patrol.

Then ideally the House would adopt the Senate budget measure without changes, Thune said, allowing Republicans to move on to passage votes on a final bill to fund the immigration enforcement agencies.

“We’re communicating as much as we can, making sure that we’re syncing this up and doing it in the way that meets the requirements that both bodies have,” Thune said Thursday, following a meeting Wednesday with Speaker Mike Johnson for a routine check-in.

The attempt at GOP unity comes after House Republicans hotly rejected the Senate’s proposal last month to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, where funding lapsed more than two months ago. Now several House GOP lawmakers are also insisting Republicans fund all of the department through the party-line budget reconciliation process — not just the immigration agencies Democrats won’t support without new rules on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Thursday afternoon that he hopes to release text of the budget framework in short order.

“We’re working on all that. Hopefully we’ll find consensus here soon. But I think we’re getting close,” he said.

“I hope we can get moving on it as early as next week,” Graham added.

Senate Republicans have started talking to their chamber’s parliamentarian as they seek to enact the party-line package — one piece of their two-part plan to end the DHS shutdown that began in mid-February.

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