Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP leaders are finally getting there.
The House Rules Committee is in session, preparing the Republicans’ reconciliation bill for floor consideration. Johnson hopes to hold a rule vote today, followed by a floor vote on the full package as early as this afternoon or evening. He is incentivized to move quickly.
To give you a sense of just how long this Rules hearing will last, the committee finished hearing testimony from the first panel just before 4:30 a.m. The panel included the chair and ranking members of the House Oversight, Budget, Armed Services and Financial Services committees.
The second panel includes top lawmakers on the House Homeland Security, Judiciary, Natural Resources and Transportation and Infrastructure committees.
The third panel will include the chairs and ranking members from the most important committees – Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, Education and the Workforce and Ways and Means. We haven’t even gotten to Democratic amendments yet – 537 amendments have been submitted to Rules.
Most importantly, we should also note that, as of press time, the House Republican leadership hasn’t released its manager’s amendment for the reconciliation bill.
This will include all of the changes to the package that Johnson has been forced to negotiate, including a new SALT cap, changes to Medicaid work requirements and tweaks to clean-energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.
CBO released a score on the existing mega-package on Tuesday night. In response to queries from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), ranking Democrat on the Budget panel, CBO found that the GOP plan would increase the deficit by $2.3 trillion over a decade. This would trigger automatic spending cuts in Medicare and other programs without congressional action.
It would also boost the incomes of the richest 10% of Americans while lowering the incomes of the lowest 10%, CBO assessed.
Boyle called the GOP bill “absolutely devastating” for working Americans.
Republicans routinely trash CBO scoring and analysis as shoddy and unreliable, so they’ll ignore these findings. But there are already protestors huddling outside the Capitol decrying hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed cuts to Medicaid.
GOP wheeling and dealing. There have been major changes to the bill in the last 24 hours. The most significant is the overhaul to the state-and-local tax deduction provision approved by the Ways and Means Committee.
Johnson has discussed with blue-state Republicans a new structure that would lift the SALT cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for those making $500,000 or less.
The income cap and deduction limit would escalate by 1% every year for a decade. This is short of what the SALTers wanted – they wanted to fix the so-called marriage penalty. And it’s more than what many in the House Freedom Caucus will be willing to accept.
But HFC is also expecting changes that it will be happy with. Johnson has discussed with conservatives phasing out IRA tax credits for clean-energy investment and production tax credits beginning in 2028. In the original text, the credits began to phase out after 2028. The deal Johnson has discussed with the HFC would also include a carveout for nuclear tax credits.
We’re already hearing an argument from the House Freedom Caucus that Johnson should delay a vote on the package. Conservatives argue that Johnson is seeking to meet an arbitrary deadline – Memorial Day. Some have begun to say that the GOP leadership should revert to two bills, an idea that the House and Senate Republicans leaders nixed months ago.
Johnson will most likely start out with two no votes on the floor: Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Depending on attendance, he’ll have one or two more to spare.
Bottom line. So can Johnson hold a vote today? Yes. If House GOP leaders get the manager’s amendment out at some point this morning, he could hold a vote late today. GOP and Democratic lawmakers will both gripe that they didn’t have enough time to review the changes – and that will be a legitimate complaint.
But for many reasons, Johnson wants to go today. No. 1: He’s hell bent on meeting this Memorial Day deadline. No. 2: Republicans expect to have attendance problems beginning Thursday. No. 3: These bills rarely get easier to pass as time goes on.
All of the changes that Johnson is making will make it more likely that the Senate is going to make significant alterations to the package.
Thune’s ‘big problem’ on SALT. Let’s talk about the Senate. Senators will certainly want to change the phase out of IRA provisions. Johnson’s proposed SALT deal could be a problem with the Senate Republican Conference.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is a longtime opponent of boosting the SALT cap.
We interviewed Thune Tuesday and asked the South Dakota Republican what he thought of Johnson’s Monday night offer — a four-year $40,000 cap for couples making under $751,600 — and whether it would fly in the Senate. Thune seemed shocked that the SALTers would reject that offer.
“This is purely a House play and designed to deal with the political challenge they have to get to 218,” Thune said. “But, I mean, that seems like an incredibly generous offer.”
One more thing: Thune alluded to possible markups in Senate committees once the legislation arrives from the House. But that’ll be dictated by the House’s timing and what senators think of the proposal.
“I’m a regular order guy. I think you can improve the product,” Thune said. “But obviously, depending on what happens in the House and the timeline we have to work with, getting committees up and going and doing their thing takes a while — and how ready the product is for prime time… There are certain things the Senate wants to have its imprint on.”
Democrats’ messaging push: House Majority Fund, a Democratic group aligned with House Democratic leadership, issued talking points for members on the bill. Here’s their memo.
The dos: Focus on how the legislation will raise prices, hurting the vulnerable while benefitting the wealthy.
The don’ts: Stress deficit increases, use “overly technical economic arguments,” “hyperbolic rhetoric” such as a “murder budget.”
“Avoid statements about ‘tax cuts for the rich’ without mention of consequences to everyday Americans,” the memo says.
