Congress
Capitol agenda: What’s next in the GOP budget saga
Senate Republicans have a new budget blueprint to jump-start President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, and Majority Leader John Thune wants to adopt it by Saturday. It’s looking like he’ll make it happen, but things aren’t so clear in the House.
Here’s a rundown of where things stand:
Senators are digesting the budget plan. While we’re not seeing sufficient defections to tank it, some key players have questions. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, for example, says she’s undecided on a key aspect of the proposal — the “current policy baseline” idea that would treat an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts as costing nothing — and is concerned that the House’s budget guidelines would force Medicaid cuts.
What’s in it? In addition to making tax cut extensions costless, it would let Senate Finance draft another $1.5 trillion of tax relief. It would also green-light a $5 trillion debt-ceiling hike that GOP lawmakers hope will get them through the next election (though Sen. Rand Paul wants to force a vote to shrink that). Senate committees would have to cut the deficit by only a few billion dollars, while the House would have to do it by $1.5 trillion — underscoring the lingering political divides between Republicans in the two chambers.
Some Republicans believe Trump might be needed to seal the deal in the Senate.
“He had to do it for the House budget,” Sen. John Kennedy said. “He may have to do it for the Senate. But that wouldn’t be anything new.”
You will probably not be surprised to learn that the outlook is less rosy in the House.
Though Speaker Mike Johnson said he plans to push through the budget next week, he’s seeing defections over the Senate’s changes to what the House adopted in February. It comes after he lost control of the House floor this week in a clash with fellow Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna over proxy voting for new parents.
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington ripped the Senate’s plan as fiscally irresponsible and predicted it wouldn’t fly with his colleagues.
Trump praised the Senate budget during his Rose Garden trade event Wednesday and later in a post on Truth Social, urging Republicans to “UNIFY.” He attempted to smooth out concerns from the Senate’s deficit hawks in a meeting on Wednesday morning.
Adding to the pressure is rising Republican anxiety about the midterms after Tuesday’s landslide loss in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race and underperformance Florida’s special elections for two House seats. Some Republicans, including vulnerable members like Sen. Thom Tillis, are now cautioning that Trump’s shock-and-awe governing strategy could backfire at the ballot box and are calling for a major recalibration.
One bright spot for Trump and Republicans here: Johnson just grew his majority by two after swearing in Florida Reps. Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis Wednesday night. He can now lose up to three Republicans on a party-line vote.
What else we’re watching:
— Tariff action: As Trump rattled financial markets with his “Liberation Day” tariff announcement Wednesday, four Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to end his trade war with Canada. Now, Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks wants to try to force a House vote on rejecting Trump’s latest slate of tariffs.
— Johnson fights to unjam the House: The speaker signaled Wednesday evening that he may be close to a breakthrough in the proxy-voting clash with Luna that paralyzed the House this week and threatened progress on Trump’s agenda. While Johnson said he still opposes Luna’s effort to allow proxy voting for new parents, he’s been in frequent contact with her behind the scenes over potential legislative options to resolve the situation.
Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Brian Faler and Jennifer Scholtes contributed reporting.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has discussed a potential solution with Speaker Mike Johnson over her push to allow proxy voting for new parents, the congresswoman said in a post on X.
“[Johnson] has called me after POTUS statement and we discussed limiting the vote to just new moms who cannot physically travel in event of emergency,” Luna said in the post. “This is smart.”
President Donald Trump told reporters earlier on Thursday that he endorsed letting new mothers vote by proxy in the House — but ultimately said it was Johnson’s decision. Luna had forced a vote on the issue, which tanked the rest of Johnson’s legislative plans for the week after an attempt to stop her effort through a rule vote.
“I don’t know why it’s controversial,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday, according to a pool report. He added, “I’m going to let the speaker make the decision, but I like the idea.”
Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer facing, is pressure from conservative hard-liners to stop Luna and has argued the practice is unconstitutional. Moments before Luna’s tweet, Johnson shared an op-ed from the Washington Times in opposition to expanding proxy voting in a post on X that has since been deleted.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one conservative hard-liner against allowing new parents to vote by proxy, responded to Luna’s update that the possible solution is still “unconstitutional” and “wrong” in a post on X.
President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-Fla.) resolution to allow proxy voting for expectant mothers in Congress — but signaled he isn’t interested in going to the mat for the change.
“I don’t know why it’s controversial,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday, according to a pool report.
The support for Luna’s push comes after Trump spoke with the member of Congress on Wednesday. Luna told NewsNation Wednesday that “the president assured that this would get resolved.”
The proxy vote fight has stalled Speaker Mike Johnson’s ambitious plan to pass the “big, beautiful” budget bill, after a handful of Republicans joined Democrats to reject Johnson’s moves to block Luna’s proposal. Johnson repeated his opposition on Wednesday, but said there “may be a path” to get the House unjammed.
Trump said Thursday that he’s in favor of the resolution. But he stressed that the decision rests with Johnson.
“I’m going to let the speaker make the decision, but I like the idea,” Trump added.
After successfully engineering a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, Senate Democrats want to do it again: They’re eyeing a new measure that could splinter Republicans and potentially undo the sweeping tariffs Trump rolled out Wednesday.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who led the push to undo Trump’s Canada tariffs that won approval Wednesday, said it was “likely” that Democrats would move forward with legislation taking aim at the new, more sweeping levies. The vote, he said, wouldn’t occur until after the Senate returns from a two-week recess slated to start on April 11.
One of the laws Trump used to levy the latest tariffs, the National Emergencies Act, allows Congress to quickly debate and vote on a disapproval resolution that would effectively cancel the tariffs. But actually doing so faces major obstacles: Not only would the Senate have to act, but the GOP-controlled House would have to approve the same measure. Trump could then still veto it, forcing a two-thirds-majority override vote.
Democrats are still poring through Trump’s latest round of sweeping tariffs to determine which ones they could potentially target for cancellation. But Kaine said he believed support for rolling back the new tariffs will only grow with time. Four Republicans joined Democrats on Wednesday’s vote, and he predicted a “larger universe” of support for the forthcoming measure.
“I think people need to go home and hear what their constituents are telling them, so I think having it timed so that it comes up over recess is the right time,” Kaine said.
Separately, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York — the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — said Wednesday he would introduce a similar measure. Speaker Mike Johnson led an effort to block a vote on a Meeks-led disapproval resolution targeting the Canada tariffs last month and could do so again for the new round of tariffs.
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