Senate and House Republicans at Odds Over Competing Budget Proposals for Trump

Republicans in Congress are at odds with one another as both the Senate and the House prepare their own respective budgets for President Trump’s blessing. The Senate’s budget chief, Senator Graham, says he can no longer wait for his House colleagues to get their act together. The House and Senate have long taken different strategies to tackle the first part of the president’s agenda, with Speaker Johnson saying that he wanted to get a budget out of his chamber with significant spending cuts, more money for a border wall and deportation operations, energy deregulation, military spending, and extensions of Mr. Trump’s previous tax cuts from his first term. When Mr. Johnson’s budget committee failed to deliver their budget outline, Mr. Graham leapfrogged them, and announced he would push his own budget proposal forward just shortly before he traveled to Mar-a-Lago to play golf with the president. Mr. Graham’s budget resolution will force some committees to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars in defense and deportation dollars, and others to slash their respective funding priorities. Mr. Graham’s legislation will receive a vote in his committee Wednesday. “To my friends in the House: We’re moving because we have to,” Mr. Graham said at a press conference on Tuesday. “I wish you the best. I want one big, beautiful bill, but I cannot and I will not go back to South Carolina and justify not supporting the president’s immigration plan.”“We’re not building a wall, folks. We’re hitting a wall,” he added. Earlier in the day, Mr. Johnson said he would not take up any Senate spending bill that Mr. Graham put on his desk, saying that the legislation would be a “non-starter.”“I’m afraid it’s a non-starter over here, and I’ve expressed that to him,” Mr. Johnson told reporters outside of his office. “There’s just different ideas on how to get there, and I’ve told my good friend Lindsey that I have to manage the House in the best and only way it can be managed.”“What I’ve been very clear about is we’re moving towards a one-bill … strategy,” he added. House leadership fell behind on their original deadline for having a budget resolution last week because conservative members kept demanding more and more cuts to federal spending — cuts which would be difficult for swing-district members to stomach if they want to keep their seats. A member of the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Ralph Norman, told The New York Sun on Tuesday that he would rather take smaller cuts to the budget than to get jammed by the Senate. “It’s just time to act. It needs to come from us,” Mr. Norman, who now says he will accept a $2 trillion cut rather than a $2.5 trillion cut in order to get the House bill to the president’s desk. He warned, however, that the House Budget Committee has offered “no specifics” to members about what it is they are voting on, though that resolution could come as early as Tuesday night. Senator Cramer, who is a close ally of Senate GOP leadership, told the Sun Tuesday that too many people are itching for a fight, and that there are productive conversations going on between House and Senate members and the necessary committees in order to get the Trump agenda passed. “There are negotiations taking place. Oh, absolutely. For sure,” Mr. Cramer said. “[Mr. Graham] will be fine. He’s fine. He’s the chairman, and under pressure, he’s applied by activity.”When asked if he was happy with the process however, Mr. Cramer responded with a laugh, saying, “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

Senate and House Republicans at Odds Over Competing Budget Proposals for Trump

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