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THE TOP
Inside the room: Where House Republicans are looking to slash

Happy Friday morning.
News: House Republican committee chairs pitched in a private meeting what could add up to between $2.5 trillion and $3 trillion of spending cuts and budget savings to fund Republicans’ reconciliation package — which would include massive tax cuts.
We got our hands on the presentations that House committee chairs made during a closed-door Republican conference meeting this week.
They lay out a road map of where the GOP’s hunt for spending cuts is heading right now. The options range from more than a dozen possibilities from curtailing student loan programs to large-scale Medicaid cuts to new immigration-related fees.
The universe of options is wide, but the GOP may need this scale of cuts to satisfy the Republican conference’s deficit hawks. Plus, reconciliation rules don’t allow for bills that increase deficits after 10 years, so anything that goes beyond that budget window would have to be offset.
Cuts, cuts, and more cuts.
– The Energy and Commerce Committee is eyeing up to $2 trillion of cuts, including per capita caps for Medicaid — which would put a limit on federal dollars sent to states — along with Medicaid work requirements and pharmacy benefit manager reforms.
Medicaid work requirements are controversial and could adversely impact hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans who get their health care through the program. President Donald Trump tried to impose them during his first term but former President Joe Biden reversed the policy. Now that Trump is back, work requirements are on the table again.
Energy-related cuts, such as rolling back tailpipe rules and fuel efficiency benchmarks for cars and light trucks, known as CAFE standards, were also part of the committee’s pitch.
– The Education and Workforce panel believes it has up to $500 billion in cuts, largely through targeting student loans. Options include lowering the amount that can be obtained in student loans, or the “aggregate borrowing limit,” along with restrictions on loan eligibility for non-citizens. Caps on the public service loan forgiveness program are another option, as is repealing the SAVE repayment plan. Colleges paying fees for unpaid loans came up too. Taken together, this is all part of a broad GOP offensive against a Biden-era initiative designed to help younger Americans faced with huge student loan debt, especially minority students.
– The House Agriculture Committee is targeting between $100 billion and $250 billion in cuts. Some would impact SNAP, aka food stamps. Mandating states pay more for SNAP benefits with a cost-share requirement, changing the Thrifty Food Plan process and expanding work requirements were among the options. Democrats are already panning proposals to cut spending on social safety net programs to pay for tax cuts.
– House Oversight and Government Reform floated up to $66 billion in potential savings. The panel is targeting federal workers’ retirement and benefit programs: the Federal Employees Retirement System and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Options include an FEHB audit and raising the FERS employee contribution rate to 4.4%, which is currently the rate for recent hires but not workers brought on before 2014.
– The Judiciary Committee is eyeing up to $27 billion in options, including a variety of different immigration fees such as charges for asylum application and annual renewal, detention, parole and visa overstays.
– The Transportation and Infrastructure panel’s up to $26 billion in savings would include raising tonnage duties for ships, and electric vehicles fees that would go into the Highway Trust Fund.
– The Natural Resources Committee has a smaller target of up to $5 billion, but the panel’s options cover some energy priorities for Republicans. The panel’s ideas include oil and gas lease sales, mining and energy-related measures, and forestry and timber sales. These will be strongly opposed by environmental and conservation groups.
There are other ideas that came up too, including work requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and reforming how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded, as we reported Wednesday.
And it’s no surprise that scattered through the presentations were multiple mentions of rolling back Democrats’ signature policy package from 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act.
The road ahead. All of this is preparation for the House Budget Committee and GOP leadership to put together reconciliation instructions. Setting revenue targets for each committee that will be involved in the Republicans’ bill is the first big step toward concrete decision-making about how the package shapes up.
Amid the hunt for cuts, Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) has stepped out to float a lot of cost savings options of his own. Some of these overlap with committees’ ideas laid out in Wednesday’s presentations, although a good amount don’t.
Arrington’s committee went into lots of detail on ideas for reconciliation in a 51-page menu of policies and cost estimates they compiled. We scooped that document for you on Jan. 17.
Ultimately, each and every cut will have to get approved by every Republican member in the House. Facing a 217-215 margin soon, any GOP member could kill the bill, at least until early April.
Politically, finding a universe of cuts and savings that everyone in the House Republican Conference can live with won’t be that easy. As we noted above, Democrats are going on offense and slamming some of the GOP’s options.
Today in the Capitol: Senate Democrats will have a caucus meeting at 11 a.m. as they look to strategize on nominations and upcoming legislation, including ICC sanctions.
— Laura Weiss, John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman
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THE HOUSE MINORITY
Judiciary Dems bring in psychologists to help them prep for Trump era
News: As House Democrats prepare to go to battle with Republicans in the Trump 2.0 era, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) brought in some unusual voices to speak to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee: a pair of social psychologists.
During a retreat last week for Judiciary Democrats, Raskin — the new ranking member of the key panel — hosted Jim Coan, a University of Virginia professor of psychology, and Hal Movius, a consultant who specializes in “negotiation,” “influence,” “emotion regulation,” “leadership” and “organizational development.”
Coan’s “recent work emphasizes the neural systems supporting social forms of emotion regulation,” according to his bio with UVa. The retreat was held at the Library of Congress.
The purpose of the session, according to multiple attendees, was to counsel Democrats about how to approach conflict and effectively combat what Raskin described as “authoritarian styles of speech.” Another attendee said Judiciary Democrats were also advised to avoid devolving into partisan mud-slinging — a more common hallmark of the House Oversight Committee, which Raskin previously led as the top Democrat.
“They’re social psychologists, and they were just talking about communication and authoritarian styles of speech in the Trump age,” Raskin told us when asked about the speakers. “We were talking about basically communication styles during the Trump era.”
The outside-the-box speaker choices reflect how Raskin, a constitutional law professor, is approaching his new role as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Raskin will be going toe-to-toe with House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a top Trump ally and MAGA firebrand who has been the top Republican on the panel for the last four years.
“I think there’s some mutual respect. But I don’t think anyone’s taking off the gloves,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), who sits on the panel, said of Raskin and Jordan’s relationship. “It will be a full-throated airing of opinions.”
Democrats have been grappling with how to respond to Trump ever since his victory in November, with some warning their party against reflexively resisting the president at every turn. Trump’s first actions as president — including a wave of executive actions cracking down on immigration and pardoning roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants — are putting Democrats’ messaging plans to the test.
And the Judiciary Committee will be home to some of the most high-profile battles over the next two years. Not only does the panel have jurisdiction over immigration, but Speaker Mike Johnson created a new select subcommittee on the Judiciary panel that will continue the GOP’s ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Other speakers featured at the Judiciary Democrats retreat include Lina Khan, the commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney.
– Melanie Zanona, Mica Soellner, John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman

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Listen NowTHE SENATE
Cruz seeks unilateral subpoena power as Senate Commerce chair
News: Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is looking to change the panel’s rules on subpoena powers, prompting Democrats to accuse the Texas Republican of a “power grab.”
The committee will consider a new set of rules at its next markup on Jan. 28, including a provision that would allow Cruz to issue subpoenas unilaterally. Previously, issuing subpoenas required either the consent of the ranking member or a full committee vote.
A senior Democratic aide called the proposed changes an “unprecedented, partisan power grab, which will destroy bipartisanship in the Senate’s most effective workhorse committee.”
The Commerce Committee has an extremely broad jurisdiction — everything from Big Tech to artificial intelligence and transportation. So the rules changes, if approved, would empower Cruz, one of the Senate’s most prominent conservatives, across a range of issues.
In a statement, a GOP committee aide defended the proposed changes as “modest,” saying they’d bring the panel’s rules in line with those of House committees. The aide also noted that similar rules were just adopted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Here’s more from the aide:
“Sen. Cruz will work with his Republican and Democratic colleagues to conduct vigorous oversight under the Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction when appropriate, but he will not allow partisan obstruction to preclude legitimate inquiries on behalf of taxpayers…
“It’s ironic now to hear complaints about partisanship from the party that tried to nuke the legislative filibuster.”
We’re also told that the GOP side of the panel wants to change the rules to allow staffers to question witnesses after senators have concluded their questioning. This is a rare practice in terms of day-to-day committee action, but it has been done before in high-profile settings, like the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and the first impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
— Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan
NOMS, NOMS, NOMS
Hegseth, Noem on tap for weekend Senate votes
The Senate is poised for a rare late-night Friday vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, as Republican leaders are making good on their promise to grind through President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees in the face of Democratic objections.
Hegseth, who lost two Republican votes during a Thursday cloture vote, will likely be confirmed during a 9 p.m. vote series. Senate Majority Leader John Thune will then move to a cloture vote on Kristi Noem’s nomination to lead DHS. If no time is yielded back, Noem’s confirmation vote would occur on Sunday morning.
That would mean nearly all of Trump’s Cabinet-level national security officials are Senate-confirmed within a week of his inauguration. Thune has teed up Treasury nominee Scott Bessent and DOT nominee Sean Duffy next.
In other nomination news, Kash Patel — Trump’s pick to lead the FBI — will have his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Jan. 30. This is the same day as former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (Hawaii) hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Gabbard and Patel are unlikely to get any Democratic votes, and both could have some GOP defections as well.
As we’ve reported, it could be difficult for Gabbard to get through the Intelligence Committee given the makeup of the GOP side and her past positions on key national security issues. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is opposing Hegseth, will be one to watch, in addition to Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.). So Gabbard’s confirmation hearing could be make-or-break for her nomination.
One more thing: Collins noted in her statement opposing Hegseth that she wasn’t convinced that Hegseth had actually changed his position on women in combat. It will be interesting to see whether Gabbard allays similar criticisms — likely to be expressed at her hearing — that she hasn’t actually changed her view on Section 702 of FISA.
Some Hegseth news: Here’s a letter from 27 House Republican women showing support for Hegseth. The group of GOP women hails Hegseth as “a game-changing, trail-blazing nominee who will deliver on President Trump’s promise to make America strong again.”
— Andrew Desiderio and Max Cohen
… AND THERE’S MORE
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has tasked Chris Toppings with handling his tax portfolio in the leader’s office, according to multiple sources. Toppings was previously an adviser in Thune’s whip office and one of his key tax aides. With Republicans working on a big reconciliation bill, there’ll be a lot of tax work ahead for leadership.
Toppings previously worked for former Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) before moving over to Thune’s team.
— Laura Weiss and Andrew Desiderio
MOMENTS
ALL TIMES EASTERN
9 a.m.
The House will meet in a pro forma session.
10 a.m.
The Senate will convene and proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense. A confirmation vote is expected at approximately 9 p.m., followed by a cloture vote on the nomination of Kristi Noem for secretary of homeland security.
11 a.m.
Senate Democrats will have a caucus meeting.
CLIPS
NYT
“For Some Democrats, Talk of ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Has Grown Quieter”
– Tim Arango in Denver, Ernesto Londoño in Minneapolis, Julie Bosman in Chicago and Kelley Manley in Denver
WSJ
“Swaths of U.S. Government Grind to a Halt After Trump Shock Therapy”
– Liz Essley Whyte and Scott Patterson
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