House conservatives are ramping up pressure on their Senate GOP counterparts to find more spending cuts for the Republican reconciliation bill.
House Freedom Caucus members met with several conservative senators on Wednesday night for two hours to urge their colleagues to fight for increased cuts. CBO estimates the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years.
“They’ve got to hold the line and make it better,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said.
Senate GOP leadership is scrambling to get enough votes to pass a bill through its chamber and back through the House by the GOP’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.
But Norman and other conservative House members haven’t said whether they’d support a Senate-passed reconciliation bill that doesn’t further reduce federal spending. We’ll note that nearly all of the House members who initially threatened to vote against the reconciliation package ended up supporting it in committee and on the floor.
HFC Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) was the only Freedom Caucus member to vote “present” on the reconciliation bill, while Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) voted against the package. Neither Massie nor Davidson are in the HFC.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said in an X post that he has “serious doubts” about voting for a bill that doesn’t include further reductions.
Harris said he wants to see more cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act and “fraud, waste and abuse” in Medicaid.
“We got to ensure these spending cuts remain, but at a bare minimum the Senate cannot reduce or roll back any of these spending reductions,” Harris said.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has been hosting weekly dinners with HFC members, said they’re all on the same page when it comes to more cuts.
“We’ve got to figure out how to balance the budget, we’ve got to figure out how to reduce spending, we’ve got to understand that we have a significant spending problem,” Scott said.
