{"id":8153,"date":"2025-04-10T12:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T12:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-a-brutal-blow-for-johnson-and-trump\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T12:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T12:05:13","slug":"capitol-agenda-a-brutal-blow-for-johnson-and-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-a-brutal-blow-for-johnson-and-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: A brutal blow for Johnson and Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Donald Trump and Mike Johnson failed to convince<\/a> enough deficit hawks to back the latest budget plan for the president\u2019s agenda \u2014 forcing the speaker to punt his planned Wednesday vote on the resolution and sending House leadership scrambling for a compromise that could satisfy hard-liners\u2019 demands for more spending cuts.<\/p>\n

Now, the speaker is staring down two potential options to get holdouts to come on board.<\/p>\n

Plan A: Rules<\/b> \u2014 GOP leaders \u201ctentatively\u201d plan to bring the budget blueprint back to the Rules Committee Thursday morning, Johnson said as he emerged from a meeting late Wednesday. They would tack on an amendment that would guarantee more spending cuts in the party-line package of tax cuts, border security investments, energy policies and more.<\/p>\n

Rep. Lloyd Smucker has proposed tying the tax cuts to spending cuts \u2014 something he said would get him to \u201cyes.\u201d Another option is more straightforward: Language to the budget resolution that would require that a certain level of spending cuts be achieved in a final product that hard-liner holdouts want.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a mutual commitment that we\u2019re going to find real savings in federal spending, because we have to do that,\u201d Johnson said Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

But that would kick the budget blueprint back to the Senate, which already tweaked this version of the budget once and has also held two all-night vote-a-ramas in less than six weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was deeply unenthusiastic about holding a third: \u201cI think everybody realizes that we\u2019re at the time that we\u2019ve got to move,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Plus, Thune would have to get key senators on board yet again. And many House moderates were privately counting on the Senate\u2019s spending levels to avoid the steep $1.5 trillion to 2 trillion cuts proposed by the House.<\/p>\n

Johnson is already trying to reassure them. He reiterated Wednesday night that House Republicans would not cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, even as their framework makes Medicaid cuts likely to meet their massive deficit reduction targets.<\/p>\n

Plan B: Conference Committee<\/b> \u2014 Heading straight to conference would be a rare and time-consuming process that would require House and Senate leaders and committee chairs to hash out the differences between their chambers\u2019 plans. It\u2019s a last resort, but one that some hard-liners have pushed in recent days to avoid a failed floor vote and force more concessions on spending cuts.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the House also hasn’t played the full Trump card (even after the president Tuesday told House Republicans to \u201cstop grandstanding\u201d). Johnson said he stepped out of a meeting with holdouts Wednesday night to speak with Trump, who\u2019s closely monitoring the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president is very anxious, as I am, for us to get this done,\u201d Johnson said after a late Wednesday meeting.<\/p>\n

A note for your calendars: Johnson said it is not his \u201cintention\u201d to leave for the scheduled two-week Easter recess before adopting a budget resolution \u2014 though he noted that Passover starts this Saturday and he doesn\u2019t want voting to stray into the holiday. The speaker said \u201cthe calendar is not our friend,\u201d but \u201cif we have to come back next week, then we\u2019ll do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we’re watching:<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2013 GOP senators back Biden-era tax credit<\/b>: Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and John Curtis are leading a letter to their leadership<\/a>, alongside Sens. Thom Tillis and Jerry Moran, asking that clean-energy tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law not be repealed as part of the GOP bill enacting Trump’s agenda. The senators say the credits are essential to the president\u2019s goals of spurring American energy and manufacturing dominance.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Michelle Bowman hearing<\/b>: Trump\u2019s pick to be the Federal Reserve\u2019s top regulatory official faces Senate Banking this morning to pitch an overhaul of how the Fed supervises banks and argue for a \u201ctailored approach\u201d to regulation that makes it easier for financial institutions to innovate. Her industry-friendly approach broadly echoes the roadmap that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined this week for easing bank regulations.<\/p>\n

Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump and Mike Johnson failed to convince enough deficit hawks to back the latest budget plan for the president\u2019s agenda \u2014 forcing the speaker to punt his planned Wednesday vote on the resolution and sending House leadership scrambling for a compromise that could satisfy hard-liners\u2019 demands for more spending cuts. Now, the speaker is […]<\/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-8153","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\/8153","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=8153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}