Just after 8 p.m. last night, the check came due for Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump.
Johnson and House GOP leaders delayed a vote on a compromise budget resolution, yielding to conservative hardliners who want deeper spending cuts than the Senate can likely stomach.
At the end of the day, Johnson had more than a dozen holdouts. And despite his patience, Johnson couldn’t convince that many GOP lawmakers to hold their nose and vote for a budget plan that they believed inadequate.
Let’s be blunt here: The gaping divide between the House and Senate on spending cuts is a big problem that can’t be papered over.
It also starkly demonstrates the limits — once again — of Johnson’s hold on his conference, even with Trump’s backing. The House Freedom Caucus and its allies have little faith in Johnson, and even less in the Senate.
For their part, Senate GOP leaders maintain that their spending-cut number was kept lower on purpose to ensure Byrd Rule compliance when a final reconciliation package reaches the Senate, and that they’re just as committed to big spending cuts as the House. That was the message Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Majority Whip John Barrasso delivered in a meeting with HFC members last night.
But there’s an underlying reason for the two spending-cut targets in the budget resolution — $4 billion for the Senate versus $1.5 trillion for the House: Many Senate Republicans simply don’t want to cut as much spending. Conservative House Republicans know it. The bifurcated spending-cut target was a sleight of hand by GOP leaders in the two chambers that conceded the point. The budget resolution, as written, allows the Senate to roll House Republicans.
Senators have far different political incentives than their House colleagues. A significant faction of GOP senators aren’t hot on deep cuts to Medicaid or repealing large chunks of the Inflation Reduction Act, for example. But that’s a principal objective for a large number of House Republicans, which puts the two groups in conflict.
So where does Johnson go from here? The House Republican leadership is eyeing four options to break this logjam.
1) As of late last night, House GOP leadership was working to get informal assurances on spending cuts from Senate GOP leadership. We’ll see whether that’s enough because that’s the leading option right now.
2) Johnson publicly floated entering a formal conference negotiation with the Senate. This was the hot topic in the conversation between Johnson and the HFC members. Hardline conservatives have been pushing this for weeks now, much to the chagrin of House and Senate GOP leaders who desperately want to avoid it.
“Going to conference takes more time and the calendar is not our friend,” Johnson told reporters late Wednesday night after canceling a vote on the budget resolution. “We have real deadlines upon us and lots of reasons to move this along.”
Left unsaid by Johnson: Splitting the difference between $4 billion and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts is nearly impossible. Trying to negotiate these numbers in a budget resolution gets Republicans no closer to bridging the divide between the two chambers. They’ve already agreed to negotiate the precise cuts during the next phase – drafting the actual reconciliation package – anyway.
Even the mere suggestion from Johnson that he’d be open to a conference negotiation upset the Senate GOP leadership.
“They got on our case for delaying. Now they’re the ones delaying,” one GOP senator complained. “The president was right, these guys are grandstanding.”
3) Johnson has also discussed crafting an amendment stating that the House won’t take up any reconciliation package unless it includes a certain level of spending cuts. Like $1.5 trillion, for instance. This would be an attempt to bind the Senate to the House’s spending-cut target.
Of course, the Senate could just ignore this, and likely would. Furthermore, in the House, rules can always be broken, changed or waived. But putting this target in writing would go a long way toward convincing skeptical conservatives that Johnson is going to try to force the Senate’s hand.
“We just want to ensure that there’s some binding way of ensuring that there will be spending cuts in the final reconciliation,” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), one of the holdouts. “That’s all.”
4) The least best option is amending the budget resolution. That would be time-consuming and would force another vote-a-rama in the Senate. Some hardline conservatives are pushing for that, but the House GOP leadership is eager to avoid it. Nobody in the Senate wants to add another vote-a-rama to the process. They’ve already done two and still need to do another before final passage of a reconciliation package.
Johnson wouldn’t “forecast” which option he’ll choose.
“I just want to tell you there’s a very good, healthy spirit of cooperation and discussion,” the speaker said. “Everyone is trying to get to the right point that will satisfy every member of this conference. And I encourage that. I’m encouraged by it, and I’m very optimistic that we are going to get this job done.”
Johnson is planning a vote for today. But he planned a vote for Wednesday and that didn’t work out.
But here’s one more thing: The speaker said he will not keep the chamber in over the weekend because the Jewish holiday of Passover begins at sundown Saturday.
