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From Washington: The Battle of Budgets

From Washington: The Battle of Budgets

Fox News23-02-2025

Last week, Senate Republicans passed a $340 billion budget resolution that could pave the way for legislation to extend tax cuts implemented during President Donald Trump's first term and add billions of dollars in Pentagon and border security spending. However, House Republicans have yet to pass their budget resolution, which is the 'big beautiful bill' that the President prefers, igniting a rivalry between the GOP members in both chambers. FOX News Senior Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram joins to break it all down.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was established in 1974, and since then, it has become one of the go-to sources for policy analysis considered by Congress. Although the office is supposed to be nonpartisan, Republicans have grown skeptical of its scoring. Now, some GOP members are pushing to use outside data to analyze the impacts their agenda could have on the national debt. Georgia Congressman Austin Scott (R-GA) joins to argue why using outside organizations in addition to the CBO's baseline could be beneficial and why the CBO needs to be reformed.
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Speaker Johnson teases follow-ups to the ‘one big, beautiful bill'
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The 'one big, beautiful bill' may not be so singular, after all. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is teasing follow-up legislation to the megabill of President Trump's tax cut and spending priorities that Republicans can push though using the same special budget reconciliation process that requires only GOP votes. That tool can be used once per fiscal year, with the current fiscal year ending on Sept. 30. So after Republicans are done with the 'big, beautiful bill,' the GOP trifecta has, in theory, two more shots to muscle through party-line legislation before the next Congress comes into power after the midterms. Johnson floated plans for a second reconciliation bill while rebutting concerns from deficit hawks on the budget impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which includes an extension of tax cuts and boosts to border and defense funding, with costs offset in part by new requirements on low-income assistance programs like Medicaid and food aid. 'Everyone here wants to reduce spending,' Johnson said Friday morning on CNBC. 'But you have to do that in a sequence of events. We have a plan, OK? This is the first of a multistep process.' 'We're going to have another reconciliation bill that follows this one, possibly a third one before this Congress is up, because you can have a reconciliation bill for each budget year, each fiscal year. So that's ahead of us,' Johnson continued, also pointing to separate plans to claw back money based on recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 'We're also doing rescissions packages. We got the first one delivered this week from the White House, and that will codify many of the DOGE cuts.' The promise of another reconciliation bill is somewhat surprising given the crux of the debate that dominated the early weeks of the year: Should Republicans divide up their agenda into two bills, passing the first quickly to give Trump an early win on boosting funding for border enforcement and deportations? Or would putting all of Trump's priorities into one bill — which would contain both bitter pills and sweeteners for different factions of the razor-thin majority — be a better political strategy? Trump eventually said he preferred 'one big, beautiful bill,' a moniker that became the legislation's official title in the House last month. It's not clear what would be in a second piece of legislation. Multiple House Republicans who spoke with The Hill were unaware of plans for more reconciliation bills and were not sure what could be included in them. 'I think we need to see what's left on the table after the first one,' Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said. And to muster through multiple reconciliation bills is a delicate prospect. If members know more reconciliation bills are coming, that complicates the argument that everything in the current package — even policies some factions dislike that others love — need to stay in one megabill. The Speaker declined to elaborate on what might be in such a package when asked in a press conference last week. 'I'm not going to tell you that,' Johnson said. 'Let's get the first one done.' 'Look, I say this is the beginning of a process, and what you're going to see is a continuing of us identifying waste, fraud, abuse in government, which is our pledge of common sense, restoring common sense and fiscal sanity. So we have lots of ideas of things that might be in that package.' Republicans had started planning for the current legislative behemoth months before the 2024 election so they would be prepared to quickly execute on their policy wish list if they won the majority. 'This isn't something we just drew up overnight. So, we'll go through that same laborious process,' Johnson said. But some members have ideas of what else they'd like to see. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said that he'd hope a second bill would do more to tackle rolling back green energy tax credits and make further spending cuts. Ultimately, though, it will be Trump's call, Norman said: 'I know when the president gets involved, it adds a lot of value.' And Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) speculated that passing the 'big, beautiful bill' would inspire members to keep going with another bill. 'People like the feeling of winning,' Pfluger said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Gavin Newsom asks Trump to withdraw troops from Los Angeles as protests intensify
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National Guard soldiers stand in front of the federal building in downtown Los Angeles, on June 8, 2025. President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 troops to handle escalating protests against immigration enforcement raids in the Los Angeles area, a move the state's governor termed "purposefully inflammatory." (Photo by Frederic J. Brown, AFP via Getty Images) This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Hundreds of California National Guard soldiers are deployed in downtown Los Angeles in an escalation of the Trump administration's rolling immigration enforcement action throughout Southern California. Their deployment comes over the objections of California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who say that local law enforcement agencies are more than capable of keeping the peace in the city. 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Los Angeles Police Department officers pushed them away from the building and fired dozens of less-than-lethal rounds into the crowd. The deployment followed two days of unrest after immigration sweeps downtown and in the city of Paramount. In one incident, officers arrested David Huerta, the leader of a California janitors' union, who was protesting a raid. He remains in custody. Trump's order deploying the troops cited 'incidents of violence and disorder' following immigration enforcement actions and the Border Patrol on social media has called attention to an incident in which someone threw rocks at their vehicles in Paramount, breaking a window. After the raids, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement published a list of what they called 'the worst of the worst' offenders caught in the immigration raids. The release also accused 'California politicians and rioters' of 'defending heinous illegal alien criminals.' 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