Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is walking into a storm this week as he looks to rally House Republicans around the Senate-passed framework to unlock President Trump’s legislative agenda.
A handful of conservatives have explicitly said they plan to vote against the Senate’s budget resolution, which sets up Trump’s legislative agenda of tax cuts, border funding and energy policy. Scores of others in the conference — including the House’s top budget writer — have also criticized the legislation.
That creates an uphill battle for Johnson, who wants the GOP’s razor-thin majority to adopt the budget resolution this week to keep pace with his ambitious timeline for enacting Trump’s agenda — and to appease the president, who has endorsed the framework. With Democrats expected to oppose the measure in unison, Johnson can only afford to lose three GOP votes, assuming full attendance.
The Speaker notched a win over the weekend in getting Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to stand down on her push to institute proxy voting for new parents. In lieu of a vote on proxy voting, the pair struck a deal to formalize “vote pairing” in the House, which would cancel out new mothers’ absences during key votes. The agreement is expected to reopen the floor.
Also this week, the Senate is scheduled to vote on more nominees to continue filling out Trump’s Cabinet.
Johnson looks to muscle budget blueprint through House
Johnson is staring down the arduous task of uniting his conference around the Senate’s budget resolution.
Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) — both members of the House Budget Committee — informed GOP lawmakers during a call Sunday afternoon that they will oppose the budget resolution, a source told The Hill, joining Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), who called the framework “junk.”
Many other House Republicans have hammered away at the legislation. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), another Budget Committee member, said the resolution is “DEAD ON ARRIVAL” for “many” members in the conservative House Freedom Caucus and other hard-liners.
Even Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the chair of the House Budget Committee, has concerns. The chief budget writer put out a statement Saturday calling the Senate blueprint “unserious and disappointing.”
The concerns among Republican critics largely stem from two parts of the Senate’s budget resolution.
First, the Senate’s blueprint asks each chamber to find a different amount of spending cuts, with the Senate facing a far smaller number: Senate committees are directed to find at least $4 billion in cuts to federal spending, with the House mandated to find at least $1.5 trillion.
Hard-line conservatives have been up in arms about the Senate’s lower instructions, assuming that the smaller number will reign supreme when top lawmakers begin crafting the final package.
“If the Senate delivers real deficit cuts in line with the House’s, I’ll support it. But with the Senate setting numbers as insulting, insincere, and low as $4 BILLION (that’s a cheeseburger, folks) compared to the House’s hard work at $2 TRILLION, I’m not holding my breath,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a member of the Freedom Caucus, wrote on the social platform X.
Moderate Republicans are letting out a sigh of relief, hopeful that the final product will have slashes closer to the Senate’s lower floor. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), for example, told The Hill last week, “The end bill will be more like the Senate’s numbers.”
Those dynamics are forcing Johnson into a difficult balancing act.
In a letter to House Republicans on Saturday, Johnson said the Senate’s resolution, despite the different instructions, “in NO WAY prevents us from achieving our goals in the final reconciliation bill.”
“We have and will continue to make it clear in all discussions with the Senate and the White House that—in order to secure House passage—the final reconciliation bill must include historic spending reductions while protecting essential programs,” he added.
The second area of contention for conservatives is the upper chamber’s use of the budgetary gimmick known as current policy baseline, which assumes that the extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts will have no impact on the deficit — despite the Congressional Budget Office estimating that it would cost around $4 trillion.
“From budget gimmicks to a pathetic $4B in spending cuts, the Senate’s budget resolution is a non-starter,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), who is also part of the Freedom Caucus, wrote on X.
While Johnson’s budget resolution problem is worsening by the day, there is one key detail that could help him muscle the measure through his conference: Trump endorsed the legislation and urged Republicans to “pass it IMMEDIATELY.”
The president is almost certainly going to be needed to get involved in uniting the House GOP conference around the measure. And the White House is already getting started: Members of the Legislative Affairs team have been calling Republican lawmakers to ramp up support for the resolution as the House eyes a vote this week, a source told The Hill.
House floor impasse over proxy voting likely resolved
Arcane procedural disputes over proxy voting for new parents — which had held up action on the House floor and threatened to further complicate leadership’s plans on the budget resolution — appear likely to be resolved this week.
Johnson and Luna, who led the rebellion against GOP leaders in pushing for allowing new moms and dads to temporarily vote remotely, reached a deal to formalize “vote pairing” — or “live/dead pairing,” as Luna called it. The move allows a member who must be absent for a vote to coordinate with a lawmaker voting opposite their stance who is willing to vote present — essentially canceling out the impact of the absent member.
Luna said on X the maneuver will be “for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies.”
As part of the deal, according to two sources, Luna would not force a vote on her discharge petition that she led last month to force action on a resolution from Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) that seeks to allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks.
GOP leaders played hardball with procedural tactics in trying to squash the discharge petition and the proxy voting for new parents effort more broadly, arguing proxy voting is unconstitutional and would create a slippery slope.
But Luna and eight other Republican rebels joined to defeat a procedural vote — blocking consideration of other matters as a result, and leading Johnson to cancel votes for the remainder of the week and send lawmakers home early.
On the other end of the spectrum, hard-line members opposed to proxy voting allegedly threatened to block floor action on other matters until Luna’s push was squashed — throwing a major wrench into the plans to proceed on the budget resolution teeing up Trump’s legislative agenda.
It is possible for members other than Luna to call up and force action on the discharge petition — including any Democrat who signed it.
But if Republicans abide by the agreement and decline to support the resolution on the floor due to the vote pairing compromise, the deal cures one major headache for Johnson for the week — allowing him to focus on wooing fiscal hawks to support the budget resolution.
Senate to vote on more Trump cabinet nominees
The Senate is set to consider more of Trump’s nominations this week, as the upper chamber works to fill out the president’s Cabinet.
The body will kick off legislative business on Monday at around 5:30 p.m. with a vote to advance Elbridge Colby’s nomination to be undersecretary of Defense for policy.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on a number of other nominations last week, including Mike Huckabee to be U.S. ambassador to Israel.