Congress
The megabill’s math isn’t adding up for Senate Republicans
Republicans are running into a major issue as they try to finalize their sweeping domestic-policy bill: arithmetic.
With just days until Senate GOP leaders want to start voting, they have been hit with a mathematical double-whammy: Tax writers are proposing a package that’s hundreds of billions of dollars more costly than what House Republicans have proposed, while senators struggle to finalize a larger package of spending cuts to offset it.
As deadline pressure from President Donald Trump intensifies — he reiterated Tuesday he wants the bill done by July 4 — Senate Majority Leader John Thune and GOP colleagues appear ready to call one of Capitol Hill’s best-known plays: daring fiscal hawks to stand in the way of Trump’s top legislative priority.
“When the House … is confronted with a binary decision of yes or no,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Tuesday, “yes is going to be a better answer than no.”
But an array of House Republicans is making clear the our-way-or-the-highway approach could be a recipe for division and delay — including from members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives who have long warned they will not swallow a Senate product that adds further to the national debt.
“They got a problem,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus member. “The conservatives have got a real problem if it’s not doing what we thought we had in the House.”
That mismatch was underscored by a new nonpartisan analysis released Monday night from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which found that the Senate’s tax package would cost some $400 billion more than the House’s in an apples-to-apples comparison.
That figure reflects pet priorities for Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and other Senate Republicans who want to make sure costly business tax incentives are made permanent. Notably, the JCT figure does not reflect a House-brokered deal on the state-and-local-tax deduction — something that is crucial to a handful of blue-state Republicans but is otherwise disposable as far as the Senate GOP is concerned.
Adding in the SALT language from the House-passed bill — which a handful of GOP lawmakers are insisting on — would add another $350 billion to the cost of the bill.
The ballooning tax cut package is important because House conservatives cut a deal with Speaker Mike Johnson as part of budget negotiations earlier this year that directly linked the size of the spending cuts to the overall price tag of the bill. Johnson even told hard-liners they could seek to remove him as speaker if he didn’t follow through.
Under that agreement, Republicans are permitted to enact $4 trillion in tax cuts as long as they muster $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. Any tax cuts that Republicans pile on above that amount needs to be offset dollar-for-dollar with additional spending cuts.
Thirty-eight House Republicans, led by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), wrote a letter to Thune in early June reminding him as much.
“Our position has been very clear for months now,” Smucker said in a brief interview Tuesday.
“I’m confident that Senator Thune has received multiple messages, not only from members, like the letter, and myself, but also with our leadership, who made the commitment,” added House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).
Technically, the deal is only binding in the House, and Republicans there can waive the budget provision with the same simple-majority vote they need to pass the bill. Still, asked on Tuesday, Johnson said he expects the final bill to comply with the House budget instructions.
Senate Republicans are hoping to exceed the House’s $1.6 trillion of spending cuts, but are running into major headaches this week.
Some of them are political: A swath of GOP senators, not to mention House moderates, are uneasy with a Crapo-led plan to hold down Medicaid costs by targeting provider taxes, which most states use to leverage federal matching dollars and fund their programs. Senate GOP leaders have sought to allay concerns about threats to rural hospitals by creating a separate rescue fund, but lawmakers are continuing to push for less drastic House language that merely freezes the provider taxes instead of rolling them back.
Other headaches have been procedural, amplified by Senate budget rules: To skirt a filibuster and pass the bill on party lines, leaders need the chamber’s parliamentarian to sign off on various cost-saving provisions, and some have not passed muster — at least not yet.
Those include a $41 billion provision that would shift some food-aid costs to states for the first time. The measure was ruled ineligible over the weekend; but Republicans were informally advised Tuesday a tweaked version could likely remain in the bill.
Asked if he still thought the Senate could find deeper savings than the House, Thune said, “I hope so” while adding that what number the Senate would ultimately land on is “not certain” while the parliamentarian rulings are pending.
Also pending is a final resolution of the SALT issue. Blue-state Republicans who pushed for raising the cap on deductions have said they’re not willing to budge on the House-passed proposal. But Arrington said that the Senate’s extra tax cuts, including the permanent business tax provisions, are “going to probably put downward pressure on what we do with SALT.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who attended Tuesday’s closed-door GOP policy lunch on Blue Light News, told reporters afterward that he expected a resolution of the SALT issue in the coming days. But it could remain live until the very end of the “vote-a-rama” senators are aiming to undertake this weekend as the megabill is debated and potentially amended.
Besides SALT, House GOP leaders will likely push for several further modifications in a final “wraparound” amendment before the Senate passes the bill if it appears poised for failure in the House, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Asked about the burgeoning House opposition to the Senate bill, Johnson said “it’s premature to judge a product that hasn’t been delivered or decided upon yet.” He said he expects the bill to abide by the House budget parameters and that he spoke Tuesday with Thune to ensure “we have a product that both chambers can agree on.”
The Senate Saturday confirmed Todd Blanche to be attorney general, following a weeks-long struggle with a handful of wary Republicans.
The Senate voted 50-49 to approve him, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining with Democrats in opposition.
Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi’s ouster in April. Questions about Blanche’s potential conflicts of interest from representing Trump, as well as his role in the creation of a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of Trump’s settlement this spring with the IRS, created headwinds to his confirmation among a key group of Senate Republicans.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who lost re-election after Trump endorsed a primary challenger, helped Blanche clinch his 50th vote Friday. He said Blanche wasn’t perfect but that he wasn’t sure Trump would pick someone better to lead the Justice Department.
“The choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” Cassidy said on the Senate floor. “It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”
Cassidy’s support came after Blanche had already spent weeks negotiating with Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who vetted his nomination as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cornyn struck an agreement with Blanche Sunday for the DOJ to curtail the payout fund and rein in a deal to exempt Trump from IRS audits.
Cassidy’s support came hours after Murkowski announced that she would oppose Blanche’s nomination, putting it on the brink of potential failure. Between unified opposition from Democrats and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence for health reasons, Blanche could only lose two Republicans and still be confirmed.
Hours before Friday’s vote, Murkowski told reporters she spoke with Blanche multiple times but that she was “good with where I am.” She said there was no “one” thing that motivated her decision.
“If there was one thing, we might be able to go back to the White House and say ‘Hey, can we work on this one thing,’” she said. “But for me it was a compilation.”
She added that she believed the anti-weaponization fund is “pretty dead” but “what is not so clear” are the audit immunity provisions of Trump’s IRS agreement, “which I just think are viewed by so many in this country as kind of a special and sweet deal for the president and his family.”
The Senate passed a bill Saturday to fund the government beyond the midterm elections, putting the onus back on the House to head off a shutdown looming Oct. 1.
The Senate approved the measure in a bipartisan 90-6 vote, with Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina voting present. The bill would fund federal agencies through Dec. 11 at current levels, with some exceptions. Senate leaders sped up consideration of the legislation as part of an agreement reached Saturday morning to allow members to leave for August recess.
The House and Senate have now each passed different bills aimed at averting a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. The House bill would fund the government through Dec. 4.
The Senate legislation sets up a year-end standoff over the Trump administration’s controversial plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants. The bill would block the administration from finalizing that rule during the length of the stopgap — and lawmakers are already expecting a December brawl over the issue.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said this week that he’s going to “fight like hell” in December to ensure Congress doesn’t further obstruct the grant overhaul.
But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resistant to the White House approach to grants. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she will “continue to oppose” the Trump administration plans “because I think they politicize the grants process, and I don’t want that to occur.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on Senate Appropriations, said she too would “welcome the fight.”
The Senate rejected an amendment from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) intended to ensure that a ban on intoxicating hemp products kicks in come November, after Senate leaders at the White House’s urging included language in the funding bill to delay it.
The Senate bill includes language Democrats sought to ensure Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol don’t get any new funding under the patch. Republicans enacted $70 billion for those agencies along party lines earlier this year.
That prohibition could be contentious in the House.
Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) said in an interview that the provision “could be a dealbreaker” and that he’s “not a fan” of the Senate version. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said Tuesday that he would say he’s undecided if GOP leadership whipped his vote on the Senate stopgap.
“I do not like the Senate language,” Van Drew said, noting the grant approval provision. “It’s one I would want to know what the president thinks.”
The White House issued a statement of administration policy in support of the Senate’s funding bill. No such memo was issued for the House bill, which did not include the funding increases and authorizations the White House requested.
“Every Member of Congress should support passage of this [continuing resolution] to keep the Government open as discussions on full year appropriations continue,” it reads.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House, praised the Senate measure for including the grant and immigration enforcement language.
“This bill is a clear improvement over the House Republican continuing resolution, but we are still nearly two months away from the end of the fiscal year and should be working together to pass full-year funding bills,” she said in a statement.
Mia McCarthy and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
The Senate is aiming to leave Washington for a five-week recess early Saturday after Republicans cut a deal with President Donald Trump to punt some of their priorities, including a framework for a party-line spending plan.
The Senate is trying to lock in an agreement that would set up votes on a college sports bill, a stopgap government funding bill, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination and GOP voter ID legislation, according to a copy of an internal notice reviewed by Blue Light News.
The Senate would then leave Washington until mid-September.
Any one senator could object to the tentative deal, forcing it to be altered or dragging the Senate deeper into the weekend. Senators believe there are still objections to advancing the college sports bill. Democrats are also waiting to see if one of their own will prevent speeding up Blanche’s confirmation.
The breakthrough is a U-turn from earlier Friday evening, when Republican senators emerged from a closed-door meeting predicting they would have to spend Saturday trying to break a stalemate within the party about how to wrap final votes before recess.
Shortly after that meeting, Trump spoke by phone with Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah about the path forward for the GOP’s lengthy to-do list.
During the call, according to Johnson, Trump agreed to punt a vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill until later in the year. Lee, who has been pushing for action on the separate SAVE America Act, also agreed to drop his demand for a formal, roll call vote on adjourning given the understanding with the president.
“I think the conclusion of the conference – and we had a discussion with the president and he agrees – [is] don’t take the vote tonight,” Johnson said after the meeting in Thune’s office.
Republicans were in talks with the White House throughout Friday. A White House official granted anonymity said Friday evening that “we’re continuing to have productive conversations with senators to advance several legislative priorities.”
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