Senate Republicans Vow To Move Forward With Their Own Budget After Trump Derides Lindsey Graham’s Plan

Senate Republican leaders say they will stick by their plan to vote on their own budget resolution to get additional money to the administration for border security, deportation efforts, and the military despite President Trump’s demand that the constantly dysfunctional House of Representatives take the lead. The House and Senate have been working on competing budget resolutions for nearly a month now, and the Senate version — authored by the Budget Committee chairman, Senator Graham — is on track to receive its floor vote on Friday. The House, meanwhile, has not even scheduled an amendment process or a floor vote for its own version. Mr. Graham says his bill is aimed at getting necessary national security funding to the president’s desk as soon as possible, saying it would be easier for Republicans to rally around those priorities while pushing off the massive tax reform fight until later this year. The House Republicans’ budget resolution calls for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts despite a national debt that now stands at more than $36 trillion. Mr. Trump says he wants the House version with its tax cut proposal on his desk, not Mr. Graham’s narrower funding bill. “Unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” the president wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”Following Mr. Trump’s statement, Mr. Graham told reporters that he would still bring his resolution to the floor on Thursday night for an amendment process and a final vote, which will likely come early Friday morning.On Tuesday night, as the Senate was voting on Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees, Mr. Graham hopped on an elevator up to the chamber wearing a t-shirt, a black overcoat, and a baseball cap. Unshaven and appearing exhausted, Mr. Graham told the New York Sun that he had just returned from the Munich Security Conference. When asked by the Sun how everything was going, Mr. Graham responded: “Crazy.”The Senate’s Republican leadership backed up the budget chairman on Wednesday, saying that they would not be deterred by Mr. Trump’s insistence that they drop their resolution. “The House, as you know, is working on a different budget resolution, and we certainly wish them all the success in moving it,” Senator Thune said at a press conference Wednesday. “More power to them.”“I think he’s made it clear for a long time that he would prefer one big, beautiful bill, and we’re fine with that, too. If the House can produce a big, beautiful bill, we’re prepared to work with them to get that across the finish line, but we believe that the president also likes optionality,” the Republican leader told reporters, reiterating that they see themselves as an “Option B” for the president, given the dysfunction in the House. “The legislation that we’ll be working and voting on tomorrow addresses, as I said, those three critical priorities, and hopefully in the end, we’ll be able — whether it’s one bill or two bills — to get all the things that the president has outlined,” Mr. Thune said. The Senate version of the budget came up only because Speaker Johnson fell behind schedule due to a lack of clarity from his own budget chief in the wake of a right-wing revolt over spending cuts. Freedom Caucus members, including Congressman Ralph Norman, told the New York Sun two weeks ago that they needed to stick by their handshake agreement with Mr. Johnson and find $2.5 trillion in spending cuts, even though the current House resolution only calls for between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in cuts, plus the $4.5 trillion for tax reform. “It’s just time to act. It needs to come from us,” Mr. Norman told the Sun. Mr. Trump’s Wednesday screed against Mr. Graham is just the latest indignity he has shoveled on Senate Republicans. On the same day, the president also came out with a separate tirade against President Zelenskyy, whom he called a “dictator.”Several Senate Republicans recently returned from Munich, where they attended the annual international security conference. One Republican lawmaker — Senator Tillis — went so far as to visit Ukraine with some Democratic colleagues while in Europe. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Wicker, who met with Mr. Zelenskyy during the security conference, offered thinly veiled criticism for administration officials who say they are engaging in productive peace negotiations with the Russians. “Putin is a war criminal who should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed,” Mr. Wicker told CNN Tuesday when asked if he trusted the Russian leader.

Senate Republicans Vow To Move Forward With Their Own Budget After Trump Derides Lindsey Graham’s Plan

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