Congress
House GOP aims to start setting budget targets for tax and other policies Saturday
House Republicans are hoping to start work on the budget targets for critical committees on Saturday — the first step in kicking off their ambitious legislative agenda involving energy, border and tax policy.
“The Ways and Means Committee is just going to be able to draft tax legislation according to what the budget reconciliation instructions are,” said House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who will be leading the charge on extensions of President-elect Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
“And so when the conference figures out what they want in those instructions, we’ll be able to deliver according to those parameters,” said Smith, when asked about the primary goal of a GOP conference meeting tentatively scheduled for Saturday at Fort McNair, an Army post in Southwest Washington.
Determining the cost and savings directives for the House committees is necessary to jump-start the so-called budget reconciliation, which will allow Republicans to pass their policy priorities without Democratic support in the Senate.
Specifically, if the conference can come to an agreement on the overarching framework, Republican leadership can put together a budget resolution that tells each committee the budgetary changes they must make over specified time periods.
According to Ways and Means member Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), there will be presentations by chairs of the committees at the GOP retreat, including not only Ways and Means but also Energy and Commerce and Homeland Security.
Republicans will be “going over a little bit of the playbook” for reconciliation, Malliotakis said. “They mentioned they could do toplines.”
Malliotakis also indicated that the GOP still had not come to a decision on whether to do reconciliation in two bills or put all of the GOP’s policy priorities together in one package.
Disagreements over the process have publicly pitted Smith against Trump adviser Stephen Miller and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, with the latter two favoring a two-bill process with taxes coming second.
“Jason will focus on the need to do the tax package within the first reconciliation, not to delay it,” Malliotakis said.
Other topics that would be discussed as part of the reconciliation package include a broad agreement, ironed out by GOP leadership during the December debate over government spending, to slash spending by $2.5 trillion and increase the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion — which came at the behest of Trump’s demands.
Any increase to the debt ceiling would be handled by the Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees.
“With all that we’re doing to restore fiscal health and sincerity, we ought to put the debt ceiling in there as well,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said Friday of the reconciliation bill.
New York and New Jersey Republicans also plan on insisting Saturday that any tax bill include an increase to the $10,000 state and local tax deduction. Their demands for the tax relief, otherwise unpopular in the GOP conference, prevented tax legislation from moving forward several times in the 118th Congress.
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said he plans “to ensure, like President Trump insists, that [SALT] remains a priority in our tax policy.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is confident Sen. Markwayne Mullin will be confirmed as the next secretary of Homeland Security despite a contentious exchange with fellow GOP Sen. Rand Paul at a hearing Wednesday.
Paul, the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sharply questioned the Oklahoma senator about past remarks that he “understood” why Paul suffered a heinous assault from a neighbor in 2017. Mullin refused to apologize for the remark.
“Those two obviously have some history, and it’s, you know, personal stuff,” Thune said. “They’ve got to work through it. I mean, in the end, this is about the job, and it’s about making sure that we got the right person there. I think Markwayne is the right person for the job.”
Asked if he was still confident Mullin can be confirmed, Thune said, “Yeah.”
Paul has scheduled a committee vote on Mullin for Thursday. While Paul’s vote is in serious doubt, Mullin could win over Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has expressed support for Mullin previously and said Wednesday he would approach the nomination “with an open mind.”
“I haven’t been rocked by some mic-dropping kind of moments,” Fetterman told reporters after the hearing.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he regretted calling Alex Pretti “deranged” but stopped short of offering a direct apology to Pretti’s family.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” the Oklahoma Republican said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday to serve as the next Homeland Security secretary. He was referring to his past comments regarding the U.S. citizen killed by federal immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota back in January, who some conservatives in the immediate aftermath labeled a “domestic terrorist.”
It was a stronger concession than Mullin gave just moments earlier, when he refused to apologize for calling Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, a “snake.” Still, when pressed by the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, Mullin would not commit to apologizing to Pretti’s family until the conclusion of an investigation into the incident.
“If I’m proven wrong, then I will,” Mullin said.
Regarding Renee Good, another U.S. citizen killed by immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota earlier this year, Mullin refused to retract comments he made at the time of Good’s death, specifically that agents were justified in killing her. He told BLN in January that agents “had the right to defend themselves.”
He said he would wait for the findings of the investigation into Good’s killing to comment further; Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) countered that the Trump administration is currently blocking state and local inquiries.
A committee vote on Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s confirmation as Homeland Security secretary remains on track for Thursday despite a fiery sparring session Wednesday between the Oklahoma Republican and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chair of the panel that must approve his nomination.
A spokesperson for Paul said after the tense exchange — during which Mullin refused to apologize for comments saying he “understood” why Paul was violently assaulted in 2017 — that the committee vote “is on for tomorrow.”
As chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Paul has wide latitude to schedule action on Mullin’s nomination.
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