Doral, Florida
Cnn
–
The power of President Mike Johnson within the Republican Party is about to be tested unlike everything he had to, with Donald TrumpThe agenda on the line.
While the political retirement of the GOP of the GOPP is coming to an end, Johnson and his team must now decide to what extent the list of GOP wishes can actually survive the very fractive house.
So far, Johnson – who has won the hammer for his discreet approach to build a consensus from the key, rather than with a megaphone – has refused to exclude anything. But with a key committee of the room which should take the first step next week to officially start the process, Johnson is preparing to put his finger on a scale.
And several GOP legislators stressed that he could not remain neutral much longer.
“We have no plan to unify behind,” said representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican in Georgia. “Leadership should advance a plan with which we can all start to get involved.”
Johnson’s allies recognize that he had to move carefully with a majority of the house so narrow – since if he took a too heavy hand, he would almost certainly anger certain corners of his conference. And from next week, the Republicans cannot lose a single vote in the House.
The speaker’s final plan must somehow satisfy the opposite ends of the party – the Hawks budget in search of billions of spending discounts, as well as vulnerable centrists who campaigned on tax reductions, y Including costly local tax relief for places like New York and California, something that has caused a lively repression of the right side of the party.
“They will have to come to us – those who are fiscally conservative and who have kept his word and asked us with which we can live,” said representative Tim Buchett, a Tennessee republican, referring to Johnson and his management team . “They didn’t do it.”
Johnson and his team envisage a package that would include 2.5 billions of dollars in spending discounts, a decision that would have an impact on a large part of the federal government – taking health care programs like Medicaid, but Social benefits for social security and health insurance that Trump has promised to protect. The Chamber’s GOP plan should include more strict immigration laws, prohibited energy production, a radical tax overhaul and amplified expenses for national defense programs – all like a massive set, to take away or to leave the package.
“No,” said chamber president Tom Cole, when he was asked if cuts to national programs could finance the GOP day. “We couldn’t find out of the discretionary budget anywhere to finance things of the enormity we are talking about.”
With Medicare out of the table, Cole said about domestic programs: “We just don’t have the bandwidth to do it from this particular money jar.”
And already, part of this friction shows a different politically explosive question: raising the borrowing limit in the United States. When Johnson told Republican colleagues on Tuesday that the GOP could probably not make the limit of debt through the budgetary process, several conservatives in the room rather made the suggestion to work with the Democrats.
“I’m going to disagree with him,” said representative Andy Harris, who directs House Freedom Caucus, Johnson’s suggestion that was not politically possible. “The Freedom Caucus provided the way to do so in reconciliation. Now he blames him in the Senate. He changed his story.
Johnson had initially hoped to use the budget process since It cannot be a filibussed In the Senate, allowing the GOP to increase the limit of debt to its conditions. But Johnson and the head of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, calculated that they would not be able to increase the limit of the debt with the votes of the GOP, so they now turn to the regular legislative process. And that means that they will need 60 votes in the Senate – and the support of the Democrats, who will have their own requests.
“We need a game call,” said a senior member of the GOP. “Time runs out.”
To adopt Trump’s agenda, Congress will have to take two steps in the complex budgetary process. First, the Chamber and the Senate will have to adopt a non -binding budgetary resolution which presents the overall parameters of their plan. Then, the two chambers will have to write the details of the binding legislation – known on Capitol Hill under the name of reconciliation – and approve it by simple majorities, while surviving the strict budgetary rules of the Senate.
The first step could start next week, said Johnson, indicating that he wants the Chamber’s Budget Committee to begin to vote on the budgetary plan, forcing the speaker to make key decisions on global budgetary objectives.
“I said to the members, there are no easy decisions left,” said Texas Representative Jodey Arrington, Chairman of the Chamber’s Budget Committee. “Each nickel and dime has a district, and these constituencies make their voices heard, except for one: my children and the children and grandchildren of people who are watching at the moment.”
GOP leaders discuss the idea of a less aggressive budgetary resolution in order to keep their group together – with insurance only when the time to write the bill of reconciliation, the language will be more difficult. But this idea is already confronted with the resistance of tax hawks that have warned GOP leadership with lowball efforts to reduce federal spending.
Asked about the GOP’s ability to merge behind a budgetary plan in the coming days, Bucchett said: “Not very good.”
Other Republicans fear that the budgetary plan can go too far in the other direction.
Representative Nicole Maliotakis, the only GOP legislative that represents a New York tranche, said that she had raised multiple concerns about the origin of funding cuts, including Medicaid, as leadership develop their budgetary proposal .
“Before voting for the upper line number, I would like to have a general understanding of where some of these decisions will come and where the Plan Cup will come.
And it, as well as other Republicans from New York, demand a more generous deduction on the tax alternatives of states and premises after the GOP 2017 tax law has closed the landing of salt.
“We understand what some of our colleagues may feel, but I may also feel bad about the idea of voting for a refundable tax credit that could benefit their state,” she said. “So it must be a give and a catch. This must be a negotiation. »»