Congress

Senate Republicans say House budget won’t fly with them

Published

1 year ago

February 26, 2025

House Republicans spent weeks in painstaking negotiations before delivering a budget blueprint for “one big, beautiful bill.” Now Senate Republicans are preparing to tear it apart.

Despite a razor-thin 217-215 House vote Tuesday, GOP senators indicated Wednesday they would not accept Speaker Mike Johnson’s fiscal framework as-is — heralding a rough road for President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda on Capitol Hill.

That’s not to say they want to start from scratch: Most Senate Republicans said Wednesday that they were prepared to switch to the House’s one-bill approach after spending more than two months pushing a competing two-bill plan. But they want major, contentious changes to policy choices embedded in the House plan.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune called the House-approved product “a first step in what will be a long process, and certainly not an easy one.”

Senate Republicans are expected to discuss next steps during an already scheduled closed-door lunch with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday. Then Thune, Johnson and the heads of Congress’s tax writing committees will head to the White House to discuss Trump’s tax agenda.

At a lunch earlier this week, Senate Republicans agreed there is still a lot of negotiating to do with their House counterparts on the Trump domestic policy agenda, which touches defense, energy, border security and an overhaul of the tax code. That includes further changes to the budget resolution, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

“It doesn’t fit the president’s plan in its current form, so we would have to make some changes,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Senate Republicans, who approved their own budget plan earlier this month, haven’t yet decided if they will ask for a formal conference committee with their House colleagues or do an informal negotiation between the two chambers and the Trump administration, to try and come up with a compromise. Thune, in a brief interview, said that he was keeping “all the options available to us.”

Immediately after the House approved its plan Tuesday, Thune called for any Republican tax bill to include a permanent extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That was an implicit criticism of the House budget blueprint, which allows for $4.5 trillion in net tax cuts — which tax writers in both chambers say won’t be enough to allow for TCJA permanency along with Trump’s other tax priorities

“I know my Senate colleagues are committed to, as is the president, permanence in the tax situation. And we don’t have yet in the House bill so we’re going to work together in a cooperative way,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who led a Feb. 13 letter calling on Trump to make the tax cuts permanent, noted that he and Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) met with Trump on Monday to urge him to make the expiring tax cuts permanent.

“We had Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent on the phone strongly supporting permanence; Kevin Hassett strongly supports permanence,” Daines said, referring respectively to the Commerce secretary, Treasury secretary and National Economic Council director. “The Senate’s behind permanence. I think many in the House leadership will support permanence, as well.”

It’s not just the tax extensions that get scrutiny from Senate Republicans. The House framework also includes a provision calling for a minimum of $880 billion in cuts from the committee overseeing some health care programs. Critics argue that it paves the way for deep cuts into Medicaid and other social programs — something some GOP senators strongly oppose.

“There might be a lot of things” we change.“There are going to be a lot of concerns over the Medicaid cuts,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “I realize it’s just a broad instruction to that committee, but I think there will be concerns about that and what that may lead to.”

Some GOP senators last week helped reject a budget amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would have included a floor of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts — same as the House budget — hinting at the looming fight ahead between the two chambers.

Hawley said he expected Republicans to support work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries but reject any cuts that would hit working Americans. Hawley added it was still to be determined how Senate Republicans address those concerns, but he suggested guardrails could be written into the final budget plan guaranteeing that spending cuts would be “not to include the following.”

Others, however, want even deeper cuts to spending. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said the reductions set out in the House budget are “just not adequate.” He said he wants to bring federal spending levels down to where it was before the 2020 Covid pandemic.

Senate Republicans also aren’t committing to keeping the House’s planned $4 trillion debt ceiling hike. Some Senate conservatives have warned they won’t support a budget resolution that includes a debt-limit hike, though most of the House’s hard-liners ultimately accepted it.

“Acquiescing to a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling is for me a non-starter,” said Paul, who voted against the Senate GOP budget adopted earlier this month. “It basically acknowledges that this year the government’s going to be $2 trillion short.”

Instead, Senate GOP leaders are still discussing instead tying a debt ceiling increase to the government funding talks now underway — which would require Democrats to help support it. Raising the debt ceiling outside of reconciliation would also allow Congress to temporarily suspend the borrowing limit rather than engaging in the politically risky act of voting on a specific number.

Ben Leonard contributed to this report.

Congress

Pence-backed think tank joins push to keep kids’ safety bills out of AI package

Published

3 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

More than a dozen groups including former Vice President Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom are urging Senate Commerce Committee leaders to reject efforts to attach kids’ online safety measures to a national artificial intelligence framework, according to a letter shared exclusively with Blue Light News.

The groups argue that the proposed measures could undermine users’ free speech rights while creating new risk to privacy and data security. Their push comes as lawmakers weigh broader AI legislation, and follows reports last week that Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is working with the White House to shore up support for a kids’ safety package that could ultimately preempt some state laws on AI.

The Blackburn-led measure is expected to include the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act, which includes a “duty of care” requiring companies to design their products with an eye toward preventing harm to children, the NO FAKES Act and the App Store Accountability Act. It’s not yet clear how aggressively it would preempt state action on narrow issues such as verifying users’ ages on social media.

Think tanks including the libertarian R Street Institute, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and industry group NetChoice, are among the 13 total signatories. They take issue primarily with ASAA, which would require app store platforms such as Google and Apple to verify users’ ages, and KOSA.

The coalition is alarmed by age verification requirements that could require users to submit personal information to digital databases vulnerable to data breaches and hacks. It also takes issue with parental consent provisions, which would “inevitably require even more intrusive data gathering to prove both the identity of the parent and his or her status as the child’s legal guardian,” the letter reads.

KOSA is also problematic, according to the coalition, because of its duty of care provision. It argues this would infringe on users’ First Amendment speech rights by “requiring online platforms to suppress certain kinds of content.”

Meta helped kill KOSA two years ago after raising similar free speech concerns with the bill to Speaker Mike Johnson, though it has since dropped its opposition because Blackburn’s package is expected to include language preempting state AI laws, as POLITICO exclusively reported Tuesday.

Congress

‘Un-American’: Democrats attack Trump’s uneven disaster response

Published

4 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democratic senators Wednesday attacked President Donald Trump’s approach to disseminating disaster aid as “unconscionable,” “shameful” and “un-American.”

At a confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, three Democrats cited an article by POLITICO showing that the president had approved 89 percent of disaster requests from Republican-led states compared to 23 percent of requests from states led by Democrats. No president has distributed disaster aid at such uneven levels going back to at least 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office.

“Denying over 75 percent of requests from states that are led by representatives of another party is unconscionable,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, displaying a large poster of a chart included in the news article.

“Given this stark data, what other conclusions can one draw other than that the president is using federal disaster assistance to punish states that elect Democrats?” Peters asked Cameron Hamilton, who would be the first permanent FEMA administrator in Trump’s current term. The committee did not vote Wednesday on Hamilton’s nomination.

“The idea that Americans who need help in the wake of a tornado or a flood or a hurricane should be treated differently based upon politics is shameful. It is un-American,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) told Hamilton.

Hamilton avoided answering questions about the discrepancy as he tried to assure senators.

“If confirmed, my focus will be to ensure that FEMA is objective, is fair and reasonable, follows the law, and is consistent in the approach to how we adjudicate claims and requests for disasters,” Hamilton told Peters.

“You still can’t answer questions about what happened while you were there,” Peters shot back, noting that Hamilton was FEMA’s acting administrator for part of 2025. “I don’t trust that that’s what you’re going to do because it didn’t seem like you did it when you were there before.”

The sharp comments came the day after 16 Democratic senators along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter to White House budget director Russ Vought citing the Blue Light News article to ask for details about every disaster request Trump has handled, including internal FEMA documents.

“There is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Blue Light News’s E&E News.

Hamilton ran FEMA from the start of Trump’s term until he was fired on May 9, 2025, after contradicting the administration by testifying that FEMA provides essential services to the country. Trump and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had said they were considering eliminating the agency.

During Hamilton’s 15 weeks at FEMA last year, Trump denied a disaster request for Washington state that had been submitted by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in late 2024, shortly before he left office.

FEMA’s own analysis of Inslee’s request found that storms and flooding had caused $34 million in damage, which is more than double the agency’s financial threshold to qualify for disaster aid. Trump and Inslee had harshly criticized each other during Trump’s first term.

Hassan asked Hamilton what he would do if Trump rejected a request for disaster aid to punish Democrats.

“Well, that’s a very odd hypothetical. I don’t believe the president would do that. But I will tell you that my oath of office requires that I follow and obey the law,” Hamilton replied.

“You all are going to have to think about what you will do when he reverses your decision, completely based on politics, which as I said would be immoral and un-American,” Hassan replied.

Federal law gives presidents exclusive authority to approve or deny requests for disaster aid. FEMA recommends whether aid should be approved or denied based on an estimated cost of repairs.

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D) recalled what she described as an unusual action by Trump after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) sought disaster aid last year following an ice storm that demolished electricity infrastructure in northern Michigan. Trump approved some disaster aid but denied Whitmer’s request for aid to repair the damaged equipment. Trump eventually reversed his denial and approved the infrastructure aid after heavy lobbying from Michigan officials.

“It’s just hard to rationalize how many disasters have been approved for aid in Republican states versus Democratic states,” Slotkin said. “Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if the stats were reversed.”

Congress

OMB nominee touts plan to give Trump appointees power to kill grants

Published

6 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the White House budget office told lawmakers Wednesday that the administration will stop federal cash from flowing to “divisive ideologies” under new grant rules in the works.

Hal Duncan, who is seeking Senate confirmation to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said during his confirmation hearing that the White House will ensure federal grants are aligned with Trump’s priorities by changing the way more than $1 trillion is approved each year.

“The ultimate deciders of these grants will be the political employees at the agencies,” Duncan noted in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The White House proposed changes last month that would put political appointees in charge of blessing or nixing awards to state and local governments, community groups, education institutions and nonprofit organizations. The result, Duncan said, will be that the administration will more easily head off fraud and no federal dollars will go to “divisive DEI ideologies, woke gender ideologies, illegal immigration.”

The administration is expected to finalize these plans as soon as this summer.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) touted the proposal as a way to ensure federal money goes to “things that President Trump actually ran on — his causes.”

But Democrats are raising concern that the Trump administration will use the new approval process to deny federal support for groups or governments that don’t boost Trump.

“That really sounds to me like you all are trying to turn the entire federal government into this one big slush fund to reward those aligned with the administration and punish everyone else,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told Duncan on Tuesday, during his first confirmation hearing before the Budget Committee.

Both committees must vote in the coming weeks to advance Duncan’s nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote by the full chamber. He is already serving in the role as acting deputy director.