House GOP’s budget impasse thaws just as winter storm sacks Capitol

It is said that talk is cheap. 

And that’s why House Republicans have done so much of it as they attempted to forge an internal agreement on a budget plan to slash taxes and cut spending. 

It is now the middle of February. House Republicans struggled to finalize plans for what President Donald Trump terms a ‘big beautiful bill.’ Especially when you consider all of the talking Republicans did – among themselves – since the start of the year.

House Republicans cloistered themselves for not one but two daylong sessions on Saturday, Jan. 4, and Sunday, Jan. 5, at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. That’s where House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., presented their ideas to slash spending and engineer a budget reconciliation package.

Keep that term in mind. Budget reconciliation. More on that in a moment.

Back on Capitol Hill, House Republicans convened multiple large and small meetings to lay out details on their package. That included a three-day session at President Trump’s golf club in Doral, Florida. 

Republicans returned to Washington with claims of ‘unity.’ But still no agreement.

Arrington hoped to prepare the budget plan in his committee last week. Such a meeting would produce a ‘budget reconciliation’ package. Budget reconciliation is a process where the Senate can bypass a filibuster and approve a bill with a simple majority. But the package must be fiscal in nature, such as addressing spending cuts and taxes. Thus, this plan likely qualifies for reconciliation. Senate Republicans must lean on budget reconciliation because they only have 53 GOP members. Not 60, which are required to break a conventional filibuster. But reconciliation is part of the annual budget process. And the reconciliation option isn’t available unless a budget blueprint is in place. No budget? No reconciliation.

House Republicans grappled last week to reach a deal. So the House GOP brass set off for the White House for a meeting with the president.

‘He’s going to have to make some decisions,’ said one senior House Republican of President Trump, noting he’s the only one who could help the party coalesce around an idea.

The session lasted for nearly five hours, although President Trump wasn’t in the session the entire time. Meantime, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was supposed to meet at the Capitol with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Netanyahu was left cooling his heels on Capitol Hill as Republicans debated plans and scribbled figures on whiteboards. 

‘[President Trump] set the tone for us to push through some things that we were stuck on,’ said Arrington when he returned to the Capitol. 

‘We made serious progress and have narrowed the gap to where we’re very close to getting ready to bring this to Budget Committee,’ said Senate Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. 

Johnson even predicted the plan may be ready later that evening. Hence, a group of Republicans retreated for another set of meetings until well after midnight.

‘I’d like to see their plan,’ complained Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. ‘They’re not going to force me into something.’ 

By Friday morning, Johnson was again diminishing expectations.

‘It may not be today,’ said Johnson. 

However, the speaker hinted that the details could be ready later that weekend. 

‘We’ve got a few more people we’ve got to talk with and a couple more boxes to check,’ said Johnson. ‘The expectation is it we’ll be marking up a budget next week, potentially as early as Tuesday.’

But the weekend optimism died when the speaker appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

‘We were going to do a Budget Committee markup next week. We might push it a little bit further because the details really matter,’ said Johnson on Sunday. ‘But we’re getting very, very close.’

Johnson attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans later that day with President Trump. So could there have been a breakthrough amid the confetti, étouffée and Cooper DeJean madness of the Super Bowl?

‘Are we going to have this bill this week, yes or no?’ yours truly asked the speaker as he entered the Capitol on Monday afternoon.

Johnson deployed his favorite verbal placeholder.

‘Stay tuned,’ said the speaker, who uses this line as frequently as a 1950s radio announcer.

‘You said last week we were going to have it,’ I countered.

‘I know,’ said Johnson. ‘I’ve got 220 people that have shared their opinions on this.’

‘Did you overpromise?’ I followed up.

‘No. No,’ responded Johnson. ‘The hard work of the negotiation has to be done on the front end so that we can deliver a product that we know everybody will support.’

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tired of the House GOP’s dithering last week, wrote his own budget package, which significantly differs from what the House intends to do. While the House blueprint will focus on taxes and government cuts, Graham’s measure would boost energy production and also call for spending money to tighten the border. The South Carolina Republican has long observed that people voted for border security in the election. He argues that provision should come first.

Johnson said he talked with Graham at the Super Bowl and ‘he and I are on the same page.’

When asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether Graham’s gambit was ‘complicating this,’ Johnson answered, ‘Not much.’ 

But when yours truly asked if the Senate moving first would help ‘increase the sense of urgency’ in the House, the speaker responded differently.

‘I wouldn’t say it’s helpful,’ said Johnson. 

An hour later, reporters again peppered Johnson for timing details.

‘I’m not going to give a projected date yet because then you’ll tell me that I overshot,’ said Johnson. ‘So just wait. Everybody relax.’

This entire imbroglio boils down to one factor: the math. 

House Republicans currently boast 218 votes in the 433-member House. There are two vacancies. They can barely lose a vote on their side. Getting any bill across the floor is a monster. 

A major snowstorm was in the forecast for Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon and into the day on Wednesday. House Republican leaders huddled in the Radio/TV Gallery in the Capitol Visitor Center for their weekly press conference Tuesday morning.

‘Ready for snowmageddon?’ House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain, R-Mich., asked the press corps. ‘And the question is: Are we going to get it today or not?’

‘Well, you were supposed to get a budget last week, and we didn’t,’ observed your trusty reporter, drawing laughter from scribes and lawmakers alike.

At the press conference, Johnson insisted that the budget was on track. He announced that the Budget Committee would meet Thursday on the package. 

But what unfolded in the news conference wasn’t nearly as interesting as what happened afterward. 

Arrington hustled over to the Radio/TV Gallery to privately meet Johnson and other GOP leaders in an adjacent anteroom. Johnson and Arrington had not been on the same page with the budget. Fox is told that Arrington and Johnson had to make sure they were aligned. Arrington had pushed for deeper cuts than Johnson.

By Wednesday morning, Arrington delivered a budget blueprint. It called for $2 trillion in cuts from what’s called ‘mandatory spending,’ like entitlements. It features $4.5 trillion in tax reductions. And it lifts the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.

The question now is whether House Republicans can pry a bill out of committee, let alone pass it on the floor.

But after weeks of jawboning, House Republicans finally had a budget.

And, for the record, Washington, D.C., also got snow.

About 7 inches.