WASHINGTON — White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller clashed Thursday with GOP senators over increased border wall funding in President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” — as some lawmakers look for deeper cuts than their House colleagues to reduce the federal deficit.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) got into a loud back-and-forth with Miller amid high-stakes negotiations over the fate of the taxation-and-spending package in the upper chamber.
“Stephen didn’t realize that we didn’t have the detailed breakdown in cost, so he explained why the wall was going to be more expensive. Simple misunderstanding, quickly resolved,” Johnson told The Post.
“We are all huge supporters of Stephen and providing the administration the funding they need to clean up the enormous mess created by Biden and the Democrats.”
The bill, which narrowly passed the House last month, would provide $46.5 billion for US-Mexico border wall construction, which could add up to 1,700 miles of fencing.
The remaining funding from the $175 billion allocated for border security in the measure could also hire up to 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers by 2030 and add as many as 100,000 more beds to detention facilities.
A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Republican said that Johnson is “still looking for a commitment to return to pre-pandemic spending levels” but is “feeling optimistic” that the White House will be receptive to that.
Johnson is currently preparing a report for the White House with suggestions about how to get more spending cuts before the bill heads to the Senate floor for a vote later this month.
Another Senate GOP aide said that the Miller meeting “concluded amicably” but estimated that around half-a-dozen fiscal hawks are still expressing their concerns to the White House about some costly provisions, including green-energy subsidies, loopholes for state reimbursements on Medicaid and state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been the most outspoken opponent to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which nearly got him bumped from the White House congressional picnic on Thursday night.
Paul has taken issue with the bill’s $5 trillion hike to the debt ceiling — despite supporting other major provisions, including making Trump’s 2017 individual tax cuts permanent — as well as with the border wall spending.
“I am supportive of border security, but I’m just not supportive of a blank check,” the Kentucky Republican told The Washington Times after exiting a Wednesday GOP conference meeting.
“Rand chairs the Homeland Security Committee in the Senate. He’s trying to use that position to eviscerate the border and deportation provisions of the BBB (that he said he’s voting against),” Miller tweeted Wednesday.
“It’s hard to imagine a greater betrayal of the Americans who elected President Trump.”
Some other sticking points for the bill, which could pass with a simple majority in both chambers of Congress through a process known as budget reconciliation, first emerged in the House.
Blue-state Republicans made an 11th-hour push to raise the SALT deduction cap to $40,000, while budget hawks in the House Freedom Caucus got concessions for Medicaid community engagement or work requirements as well as clawbacks of solar, wind and other renewable energy credits from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday that the legislation would reduce federal spending by more than $1.6 trillion in total — and are counting on added revenue from Trump’s global tariffs to prevent trillions of dollars more being added to the national debt.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has still projected the bill will add around $3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years in its current form.
