Johnson and Trump scramble to show agenda progress amid tariff tumult
Speaker
Mike Johnson
and President Donald Trump were already facing pressure to move forward with their ambitious legislative agenda. Now, with the financial world teetering as a result of Trump's new global tariffs, progress is becoming essential — and the two men will need to work closely this week to show it.
Johnson on Sunday
vowed to push through
a reworked budget plan this week, setting off a final sprint toward passage of the GOP's domestic policy megabill, despite a growing backlash from fiscal hawks in his ranks who view the Senate-approved framework as a prelude to surrender on spending cuts.
On a private call with his GOP members, the speaker specifically cited the market tumult as a reason for the House to move quickly and not try to make changes to the reworked plan. But with Johnson pushing for a Wednesday vote, a band of House GOP fiscal hawks isn't buying it.
'It's still going to fail on the floor,' said one who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the budget plan's prospects.
That's where Trump comes in. Leaders believe that they will ultimately be able to muscle the
budget measure
across the House floor this week with a big hand from Trump, who successfully cajoled GOP holdouts on multiple crucial votes earlier this year — including a recent spending bill, a prior budget vote and even Johnson's election as speaker.
Amid the impending whip effort, the 'Big Six' budget negotiators — Johnson, Senate Majority Leader
John Thune
, Senate Finance Chair
Mike Crapo
, House Ways and Means Chair
Jason Smith
, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett — are likely to huddle Tuesday for their standing weekly meeting, according to two people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Bessent has been pressing for the House move quickly as he tries to navigate the tariff-driven market selloff.
Trump, meanwhile, helped Johnson solve another problem that was threatening to upend his agenda: a
bizarre and nasty intra-GOP dispute
over proxy voting for new parents. The clash with Rep.
Anna Paulina Luna
of Florida left the House floor paralyzed and prompted Johnson to send lawmakers home early last week.
Trump spoke to both Johnson and Luna last week about the dispute and even weighed in on it publicly,
seeming to side with Luna
on the merits of her legislation but deferring to Johnson on finding an accommodation.
Johnson on Sunday announced a deal in which Luna would back off her proxy-voting legislation, which she'd forced to the floor through a discharge petition, and he would in turn end his bid to kill the bill. Instead, he explained to GOP members on a Sunday conference call, the House would work to implement an alternative voting procedure for new parents that would not involve proxy voting, with Johnson and many House conservatives staunchly opposed.
Luna, in
announcing the deal
, thanked Trump for intervening. 'There was a ton of disinformation surrounding why the floor was shut down either way I'm glad to see this resolved,' she said.
Solving the budget standoff will be nowhere near as simple.
For one, Trump will have to lean on a swath of fiscal hawks, not just one hard-nosed holdout. A number of members publicly announced their opposition within hours after the Senate approved its version of the budget framework early Saturday morning. They include Rep.
Chip Roy
of Texas, the influential hard-right rabble-rouser, as well as members who are not typically seen breaking with leadership, including Reps.
David Schweikert
of Arizona and
Lloyd Smucker
of Pennsylvania.
The holdouts
are livid over the modest spending cut targets
in the Senate's bare-bones budget plan, and there are already enough to tank it on the House floor. Even with a slightly larger 220-213 majority following two Florida special elections last week, Johnson can lose only three Republicans on a party-line vote if all members are present and voting.
House GOP leaders acknowledge they have their work cut out for them in the final sprint before the chamber leaves for a two-week recess Thursday. If the floor vote appears poised to fail, some aides are discussing whether they could skip it for now and instead send the budget resolution to a conference committee of House and Senate leaders to hammer out a compromise.
One hard-liner holdout, Rep.
Andy Harris
of Maryland, floated another option over the weekend: delay adoption of the budget plan and move forward instead with drafting the final megabill and actually hammering out the tax and spending cuts the two chambers have been shadow-boxing over. Senior GOP aides still believe the House would eventually have to approve the final budget plan on the floor.
But for now, they're hoping Trump can simply force the holdouts to fall in line and finish up the budget plan this week. Delaying a final vote after setting out a firm goal of showing progress before the recess, they fear, would send another dismal message to the markets on top of the tariff turmoil.
Johnson and other GOP leaders said in a Friday letter to members that 'time is of the essence' with 'the debt limit X-date approaching, border security resources diminishing, markets unsettled, and the largest tax increase on working families looming.'
The leaders argue the House's framework is still included in the Senate-approved plan, and senior GOP aides privately have argued for many days that once they explain it to members, they'll be able to get them on board. But some of those same aides worry that Johnson's decision to send members home last Tuesday also made that member education effort more difficult.
Johnson faced sharp questions on the Sunday conference call about both the budget plan and the tariffs, and he's certain to face more angry members in a closed-door GOP conference meeting set for Tuesday morning.
So far Johnson's arguments haven't been well received by fiscal hawks. He and House Majority Leader
Steve Scalise
huddled Tuesday in the speaker's office with House Budget Chair
Jodey Arrington
about next steps, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
But the following day, Arrington publicly aired
deep public reservations
about the plan the Senate was then considering. And on Saturday morning, after the Senate approved it, Arrington took things a step further and blasted the reworked plan as 'unserious' — comments that stopped short of outright opposition but still fueled the hard-liners' scorched-earth campaign against it.
Key Budget Committee Republicans and hard-line Freedom Caucus members have spent the weekend in a flurry of calls and texts trying to strategize about the way forward, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the ongoing conversations.
Meanwhile, senior Republicans were heartened when Trump backed the reworked Senate plan in a
Truth Social post
, telling House and Senate Republicans to advance it 'IMMEDIATELY.' They expect Trump to stay involved in the process, calling and locking down support with the remaining holdouts in the coming days, as he promised Senate Republicans he would do in a White House meeting last week.
But the holdouts might not be so easy to sway this time. Asked about Trump's endorsement of the Senate plan, another House Republican who predicted it would fail replied: 'Did his endorsement change the text of the resolution?'
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