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{"id":5887,"date":"2025-02-07T20:03:59","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T20:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-gop-still-has-big-problems-to-solve-on-its-budget\/"},"modified":"2025-02-07T20:03:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T20:03:59","slug":"house-gop-still-has-big-problems-to-solve-on-its-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-gop-still-has-big-problems-to-solve-on-its-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"House GOP still has big problems to solve on its budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>House Republicans are still far from finalizing several key details of a budget blueprint that Speaker <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/242539\" data-person-id=\"242539\">Mike Johnson<\/a> is pledging to advance in the House next week, with negotiations expected to continue through the weekend as the Senate races ahead with its own plans.<\/p>\n<p>While House GOP leaders trumpeted tremendous progress coming out of a White House meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday, key holdouts on Trump\u2019s sweeping agenda of tax cuts, border security and energy initiatives indicated Friday that they remained unconvinced about the level of spending cuts in the bill.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, Republican tax writers continue to struggle with the ballooning costs of Trump\u2019s wishlist, which includes not only an extension of his 2017 tax cut package, but also new income tax exemptions for tips, overtime earnings and Social Security benefits.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Senate Budget Chair <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51186\" data-person-id=\"51186\">Lindsey Graham<\/a> released a plan Friday that would get border and energy policies out the door first and save the thorny tax questions for later. That is directly at odds with House leadership plans to roll everything into a single bill.<\/p>\n<p>House Republican hard-liners continued to push for deeper spending cuts. One prominent budget hawk complained that several key lawmakers were cut out of the White House meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Leadership \u201cfailed to talk to us,\u201d said Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/306837\" data-person-id=\"306837\">Tim Burchett<\/a> (R-Tenn).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey go to the White House and they take all the people that are going to be for it, and there\u2019s four of us that are pretty consistent, and we\u2019ve let our views be known,\u201d said Burchett, naming Reps. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/189182\" data-person-id=\"189182\">Andy Biggs<\/a> (R-Ariz.), <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/276525\" data-person-id=\"276525\">Victoria Spartz<\/a> (R-Ind.) and <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/198835\" data-person-id=\"198835\">Thomas Massie<\/a> (R-K.y.) as the other critical holdouts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo surprise to me, because nobody ever wants to share any time with the president,\u201d Burchett said.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson, who had previously said Republicans would release a plan Friday, will now work through the weekend with other leaders to try to finalize an agreement. Senior Republicans aren\u2019t expecting any final details until Monday \u2014 adding another delay to the speaker\u2019s ambitious timeline.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving the Capitol on Friday, Johnson confirmed in a brief interview that he hadn\u2019t yet spoken with Burchett or similar holdouts. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna get everybody there,\u201d he quickly added.<\/p>\n<p>Asked about the group saying they still have concerns about the level of spending cuts, Johnson replied: \u201cEverybody does.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Winning over Burchett and Massie is particularly critical. Neither lawmaker has ever voted to increase the debt limit, and Massie recently decried the fact that the GOP was considering enacting tax cuts at all. <\/p>\n<p>In an interview Thursday night, Massie was noncommittal about Johnson\u2019s latest plan, saying he\u2019d have to \u201csee if it&#8217;s reasonable at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Johnson is now trying to wedge a debt limit hike into the massive budget package after Trump again pressed for it to be dealt with quickly during the White House meeting Thursday, according to two people who were in the room who were granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s on top of the difficult tax-related issues that House Republicans have to sort through. Trump on Thursday announced new proposals to increase taxes on Wall Street money managers and sports team owners, alongside reiterating his desire for the income tax exemptions he campaigned on.<\/p>\n<p>All of that adds to the pressure on the Ways and Means Committee to assemble a tax package that can remain fiscally palatable to Republicans who do not want to add to federal budget deficits. Already, leaders are looking at counting economic growth effects alongside spending cuts to keep the overall package\u2019s costs in line.<\/p>\n<p>GOP leaders had tentatively decided on Thursday they\u2019re going to provide instructions to the House Ways and Means Committee that would allow tax writers $4.7 trillion leeway to enact Trump\u2019s tax policies, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was granted anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. <\/p>\n<p>The number has not been finalized and could change as negotiations continue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s getting the Ways and Means [budget] instruction just right,\u201d said House Republican Conference Vice Chair <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/370303\" data-person-id=\"370303\">Blake Moore<\/a> (R-Utah) of the biggest obstacle to getting a plan finalized. \u201cI think we\u2019re all committed to finding the necessary spending reform and spending reductions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A longer-standing issue also hasn\u2019t been resolved.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. <a>Mike Lawler<\/a> (R-N.Y.), who has been pushing to increase the deduction for state and local taxes, commonly known as SALT, huddled with Johnson for several hours Thursday night. Blue-state Republicans have indicated that they won\u2019t vote for a tax bill without an increase to SALT, but other members in the conference detest the deduction and say that any increase to the $10,000 cap needs to be paid for.<\/p>\n<p>Lawler said on Friday that no agreement on SALT had been reached yet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole tax bill has to be paid for,\u201d Lawler said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just SALT. The president wants to do tax on tips and that has to be worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No matter what Congress\u2019 official revenue scorer, the Congressional Budget Office, says about the costs on the GOP\u2019s tax bill, Republicans have emphasized that they will be running their own economic models to determine how much growth would be stimulated by the various tax provisions. That, in turn, would lower the cost of their plan.<\/p>\n<p>House Majority Leader <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/59655\" data-person-id=\"59655\">Steve Scalise<\/a> indicated Friday that Republicans were close to coming to an agreement on what those growth numbers look like. Notably, head rebel Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/3265\" data-person-id=\"3265\">Chip Roy<\/a> (R-Texas) sounded optimistic Friday. But he added there was more work to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we\u2019re in the ZIP code. There\u2019s still some variables that I\u2019m trying to study to figure out whether I think that\u2019s correct. The levers are what are your assumptions on growth,\u201d Roy said. \u201cWe need enough cuts, in my opinion, to sort of go hand in hand with the taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>House Republicans are still far from finalizing several key details of a budget blueprint that Speaker Mike Johnson is pledging to advance in the House next week, with negotiations expected to continue through the weekend as the Senate races ahead with its own plans. While House GOP leaders trumpeted tremendous progress coming out of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}