Speaker Johnson launches sales mission as ‘big, beautiful bill' hits the Senate

The Hill

4 days ago

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is on a sales mission for the 'big, beautiful bill' full of President Trump's legislative priorities, defending its contents amid a wave of criticism from his party about the depth of spending cuts, significance of Medicaid changes and the rollback of green-energy tax credits.
Johnson said in multiple interviews that he sent a 'long text message' to Elon Musk vouching for the bill after the billionaire tech mogul said he was disappointed with the legislation, complaining that it undermines the cost-cutting work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his brainchild.
The Speaker has also gone on a cable news blitz, pushing back on concerns Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are voicing about the deficit impact of the bill, tearing into the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's math, and arguing that the benefits of the package outweigh its shortcomings.
And now, Speaker Johnson is looking to ease concerns of conservatives by promising to quickly stage a vote on a bill that would claw back billions of dollars in federal funding — reflecting some of the cuts DOGE has made — and signaling there may be more to come after the 'one big, beautiful bill' gets to the president's desk.
'This is not the only reconciliation bill,' Johnson said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'We're going to have a second budget reconciliation bill that follows after this, and we're beginning next week the appropriations process, which is the spending bills for government.'
The full-court press comes as the bill is making its debut in the Senate, where Republicans say they plan to make changes to the sprawling package, threatening to erode the delicate support for the legislation in the narrow House GOP majority.
Johnson has publicly and privately urged his upper chamber colleagues to keep their alterations minimal.
At least on one issue, the Senate appears to be listening.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a former House member who has acted as a liaison between the two chambers, told The Hill last week that he does not expect the Senate to change the $40,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap in the bill, which had emerged as a major sticking point in the House.
'I don't think we can change that,' Mullin said. 'I don't think you can drop it. I think if you go below $40,000, I think it causes issues.'
SALT had been one of the biggest questions heading into the Senate's turn with the bill. While quadrupling the deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000 was a central priority for moderate House Republicans from high-tax blue states like New York, New Jersey and California, the issue has no GOP advocates in the Senate — a dynamic those in the upper chamber openly recognized.
As of now, the House is winning the argument.
'In the Senate, we don't have any dog in the fight, right. Zero,' Mullin said. 'But in the House, it does, and I don't think it's a do-or-die on our side.'
While the SALT question may be adjudicated, the Senate still has to make decisions on a host of high-stakes issues, including whether to beef up spending cuts, water down Medicaid changes or minimize the rollback of green-energy tax credits — any of which could derail the House's tenuous equilibrium.
Mullin, for his part, said the entire Republican trifecta has been closely coordinating throughout the process.
'We've been talking together the whole time,' he said. 'So the House and the Senate and the White House have been talking this whole time together, so I don't see there being a huge difference between us.'
But to keep the trains on the track in the House, Johnson will have to continue his messaging blitz and put out any fires that arise as the Senate parses the package's particulars.
It is a role shift for Johnson, who spent months in closed-door meetings corralling the fractious House Republican Conference around the behemoth bill — culminating in a through-the-night saga on the House floor to pass it out of the chamber as fast as possible after securing the support it needed.
But while Johnson met his Memorial Day deadline to pass the bill out of the House after last-minute negotiations, the rest of the Republican ecosystem is not yet on board with its contents — or up to speed on what made the cut and what did not.
That's led to Johnson's blitz being as much of an education campaign as it is an advocacy mission.
'This is not a spending bill. This is a reconciliation package. It is reconciling the budget,' Johnson said on 'Meet the Press.'
'We're beginning next week the appropriations process, which is the spending bills for government. And you're going to see a lot of the DOGE cuts and a lot of this new fiscal restraint reflected in what Congress does next,' Johnson said. 'So stay tuned, this is not the end-all, be-all.'
In a show of that commitment, Johnson has pledged to swiftly act on a package from the White House expected to hit Congress this week that would mark the first codification of DOGE cuts — action that the outraged conservative base had been clamoring for. The $9.4 billion rescission package would claw back spending from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, as well as from the largely-dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development.
And as for those pesky budget projections forecasting the bill adds trillions to the national debt over a decade, Johnson argues the budget scorers don't adequately assess the impact of economic growth spurred by the tax cut extension or other Trump policies.
'The president's extraordinary policies are producing great things for the country. The tariff policy that was so controversial in the beginning is having an extraordinary effect on the U.S. economy,' Johnson said, in contrast to numerous analysts who say the tariffs will damage economic growth.
Despite the looming fights in the Senate, Johnson remains confident that the party will meet its self-imposed deadline of enacting the package by July 4 — betting he will be able to pull another rabbit out of his hat.
'They've always discounted us,' Johnson said Sunday. 'I mean, I said I would do it out of the House before Memorial Day, and I was laughed at when I said that back early part of the year. But we beat it by four days, OK? We're going to get this done, the sooner the better.'
'Because all these extraordinary benefits that we're talking about have to happen as soon as possible,' he added. And I'm convinced that the Senate will do it, do the right thing, send it back to us. We're going to get it to the president's desk, and we're all going to have a glorious celebration on Independence Day, by July Fourth when he gets this signed into law.'
Al Weaver contributed.