Timing of the vote on the budget resolution is to be determined. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the plan is for it to be this week.
The House Rules Committee advanced on Feb. 24 a budget resolution that would begin the process of the GOP passing a major bill consisting of President Donald Trump’s agenda, sending it to the House floor for a crucial vote.
The committee reported out the resolution 9-4.
When there will be a vote on the resolution is to be determined. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the plan is for it to be this week.
With no Democrats expected to vote for it on the House floor, Johnson can only afford to lose a couple of Republican votes, amid unease about proposed reforms to Medicaid. The GOP has 218 seats in the House, while the Democrats have 215, and there are two vacancies.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) told The Epoch Times that the GOP is “very close” to getting the resolution passed.
Part of the resolution calls for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut the deficit by $880 billion over a decade and therefore, members said, could lead to cuts to the program providing health insurance to low-income individuals.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) told The Epoch Times he is “leaning nay” when it comes to the resolution and said he talked to Trump and that the president understood where he was coming from.
“There are good, hard, working-class people who receive Medicaid as they are working. This is not just lazy people who are sitting around not doing their job,” he said.
“To get to that $880 billion-plus, I don’t know how you do it without cutting Medicaid seriously.”
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) told The Epoch Times that “nothing has been decided yet” when it comes to what would be cut.
“I agree with the president in that we want to stabilize and secure Medicaid, and we’re going to do just that,” he said.
Carter warned that a delayed vote would do no good.
“I think that we ought to go forward with it,” he said. “I’m very confident we’re going to be able to get it passed.”
Addressing a Feb. 24 event hosted by the conservative grassroots organization Americans for Prosperity, Johnson acknowledged “there may be more than one” Republican against the resolution but that eventually, it will pass.
“Look, everybody needs to understand that the resolution is merely the starting point for the process,” he told reporters. “So there’s nothing specific about Medicaid in the resolution. The legislation comes later, so this is the important first start.”
The GOP is looking to pass Trump’s agenda through a mechanism called reconciliation, which allows for measures related to taxing, spending, and the national debt to pass without having to face the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster in the Senate that most legislation must clear. In order for the reconciliation process to begin, both the House and Senate must pass an identical budget resolution that instructs committees on what to do in the ultimate bill.
The House budget resolution would set the stage for a bill that consists of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. In addition to taxes, it would include measures related to border security and energy. It would also raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, as the national debt is expected to reach the current borrowing limit in a few months though there is no definitive date.
Meanwhile, the Senate budget resolution, which the upper congressional chamber passed last week, outlined a bill that would allocate $175 billion toward border security, and $150 billion for the military. It would cut the deficit over a decade by more than $4 billion. The Senate approach delays addressing cuts to taxation, the sovereign debt limit, and efficiency reforms to Medicaid to a second bill.
Trump has said he is open to both chambers’ approaches as long as his plans for America are implemented, after previously endorsing the House’s all-encompassing bill.