Just more than two weeks into his second term, Republicans in Congress are already falling behind on President Trump’s plan to get “one big beautiful bill” to his desk to deal with issues like immigration enforcement, defense spending, energy leases, tax cuts. All this as the government barrels toward a shutdown deadline and debt ceiling breach, none of which Democrats are inclined to help with as long as the president and Elon Musk maintain their freeze on government spending.

Speaker Johnson has said he wants to stick to the president’s plan to have one gargantuan piece of legislation to push forward Mr. Trump’s second term agenda, though his colleagues have not even hit their first deadline. The House Budget Committee was due to release its framework this week, though that has been pushed back to next week due to opposition from conservative lawmakers, who have demanded $2.5 trillion in federal spending cuts over ten years. 

The House conservatives are bullish on getting the $2.5 trillion in cuts before moving forward, though they have not heard anything from leadership about the exact mechanism for getting there. Two members of the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Ralph Norman and Congressman Chip Roy, told the New York Sun and other reporters on Wednesday that they think they can get it done. Mr. Norman says that the Republican leadership has only offered about $1 trillion worth of cuts, and have yet to come back with another proposal after Freedom Caucus members said that wasn’t substantial enough. 

“They’ve kept the numbers quiet, and there’s a lot of moving parts to this,” Mr. Norman said. “I don’t know, we’ll see how it works out.”

“We had an agreement — the House conference to do $2.5 trillion, in other words, $250 billion a year, back in December,” Mr. Roy said. “I feel like we oughta be focusing on that.”

Other lawmakers aren’t as confident, however. 

A senior member of the Republican conference, Congressman Mike Simpson — chairman of one of the powerful appropriations subcommittees — tells the Sun that hardline conservatives are not going to get everything they want out of the legislation. 

“If they can find it, they can find it,” Mr. Simpson said when asked if he thought members of the Freedom Caucus could cut $2.5 trillion out of the federal budget. When asked if he thought they could find that money, Mr. Simpson said, “I don’t.”

“The problem is, if they get to that, you can’t pass the bills,” he added. 

The biggest challenge for Republicans now is that the government runs out of money in just over a month, and America is due to hit its debt ceiling on the same day — March 14. Democrats and Republicans were expected to work together — as they have before — to fund the government via continuing resolution, which simply extends government funding at current levels, while also potentially using the debt ceiling as a negotiating tool. 

After Messrs. Trump and Musk’s shutdown at the U.S. Agency for International Development, however, Democrats say they won’t lift a finger to aid their GOP colleagues.

“They’re bragging about this great mandate that they have. Let them put on their mandate pants and do whatever they wanna do,” Congressman Jim McGovern tells the Sun. “If they want us, things have to change, and you know, I’m more than willing to work with them. … But I’m not a cheap date.”

Based on the numbers currently being floated by House Republican leadership, budget experts say the GOP is set to accelerate America’s debt crisis if they stick by its plan. Mr. Trump’s tax plan alone would reduce federal revenues by as much as $3 trillion, by some estimates. 

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said on Wednesday that the total cost of Republicans’ immigration–border–energy–tax cut plan is estimated at $5.5 trillion. At that number, the annual cost of interest payments on the national debate would more than double to $2 trillion by 2035.