Senate Republicans moved Tuesday to take charge of drafting President Trump’s marquee legislative agenda next week after House Republicans faced setbacks in their own discussions.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced Wednesday that the upper chamber will mark up a budget resolution next week and teased plans to bring forth two separate bills to enact the president’s platform.
“The Senate Budget Committee will be moving forward next week to give the Trump Administration’s Border Czar, Tom Homan, the money he needs to finish the wall, hire ICE agents to deport criminal illegal immigrants, and create more detention beds so that we do not release more dangerous people into the country,” Graham said in a statement.
“This will be the most transformational border security bill in the history of our country.”
House GOP lawmakers were supposed to kickstart that endeavor by crafting a budget resolution bill, which is needed to start the reconciliation process in the Senate and bypass the 60-vote legislative filibuster.
However, a planned markup session by the House Budget Committee was canceled following backlash from fiscal hawks in the GOP conference.
“Senate will not take the lead,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had insisted to reporters Tuesday, per Fox News. “We’re going to, and we’re right on schedule.”
Republican senators have long butted heads with their House counterparts over leadership’s plan to stuff Trump’s agenda into “one big beautiful bill,” rather than the separate measures preferred by senators.
Republican senators have also butted heads with their House counterparts over leadership’s plan to stuff Trump’s agenda into “one big beautiful bill,” rather than the separate measures preferred by senators.
Graham indicated that the Senate’s bill will call for energy reform and beefed-up defense spending in addition to border security.
That means the second part of the agenda, tax reform, will be taken up at a later time if all goes according to Graham’s plan.
This approach has also been favored by hardline Republicans in the House, such as members of the conservative Freedom Caucus.
Currently, Republicans have a 218-215 majority in the House, meaning they can only afford one defection before partisan legislation is defeated. The math has given hardliners, like members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, more power with which to extract concessions.
The tax component of Trump’s agenda has proven to be the most tricky aspect to nail down due to differing views within the House GOP over what to prioritize.
For example, Republicans plan to extend the 2017 tax cuts, which the Tax Foundation estimates would add $3.5 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, even accounting for economic growth, if there are no offsets.
But Republicans plan to go further by raising the cap on the state and local tax deduction; fulfilling Trump’s pledge of no tax on tips, overtime or Social Security; beefing up border security; and ramping up defense spending. The costs for all of that could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade.
“There are a lot of numbers floating around. I mean, you know, CBO’s [Congressional Budget Office] got their numbers, and we’ve had real issues with them, because CBO has been wrong so many times,” Scalise added, per Fox.
In addition to the mad dash to draft Trump’s agenda, Congress has to grapple with a March 14 deadline to avert a government shutdown as Democrats plan to use the standoff to extract concessions from House leadership.
If the House is able to take back control of the process, Scalise has indicated that they are setting their sights on achieving tech magnate Elon Musk’s goal of slashing nearly $1 trillion in federal spending over a 10-year period.
