News: The House Energy and Commerce Committee is targeting May 7 for a markup of its portion of the Republican reconciliation package, according to sources familiar with the planning.
Energy and Commerce, chaired by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), is instructed to find $880 billion in savings from its areas of jurisdiction, which includes Medicaid. Several moderate House Republicans wrote a letter to Guthrie and House GOP leadership this week vowing to oppose steep cuts to Medicaid.
Other items in E&C’s sights include spectrum sales, rolling back electric vehicle mandates and pharmacy benefit manager reform.
The big picture: The GOP leadership has an ambitious timeline for House committees to take up their portions of the reconciliation package. The leadership wants many of the committees involved in the bill to hold markups during the first week after recess.
That includes the panels tasked with new spending on border security and defense: the Judiciary, Homeland Security and Armed Services committees. Other committees with relatively easy policy decisions would go then too.
Several panels that have a bigger lift are being given more time, including E&C, the Ways and Means Committee and the Agriculture Committee. But Republican leaders want those markups to happen the week of May 5.
Still, Ways and Means, which has a massive job in assembling the GOP’s tax package, is most likely expected to mark up later in May, people familiar with the schedule told us.
The GOP leadership is trying to keep momentum going to force the reconciliation bill to the finish line, a strategy that’s worked well so far.
But moving this quickly to markups could leave more time for blowback to politically sensitive pieces of the bill if it doesn’t pass quickly in both chambers. That could be especially challenging when it comes to spending cuts for Medicaid and SNAP; and any revenue raisers in the tax bill.
The vastly different instructions for House and Senate committees in the budget resolution are also a challenge for panels in writing their portions of the bill this quickly.
