Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said discussions over how to pass President Trump’s legislative agenda will continue through the weekend — including Super Bowl Sunday — as lawmakers race to complete the final details of the sprawling package as the Senate threatens to move on its contrasting strategy.
Leaving the Capitol just before midnight on Thursday after a marathon day of meetings, Johnson said he was pleased with the progress made on the legislation, but noted that there are still matters that need to be hashed out.
“We may have a little bit more work on Saturday and Sunday at the Super Bowl, but we are very, very close, and I’m very optimistic and happy with how things are going,” Johnson told reporters.
Johnson and Trump are expected to attend the Super Bowl in New Orleans, La., on Sunday.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) sounded the same optimistic tone, telling reporters on his way out of the Capitol that he was still hopeful the House Budget Committee could mark up a budget resolution early next week, despite having to work through the weekend.
“We’re continuing to make progress,” Scalise told reporters. “Obviously, you know, get to a point where we can bring this to the Budget Committee is our goal for next week, and we’re gonna keep working tomorrow through the weekend to iron out the final details.”
The weekend work in the House comes as GOP lawmakers are racing against Senate Republicans, who are planning to move on their contrasting two-track budget reconciliation strategy early next week, which contrasts with the lower chamber’s one-bill blueprint. The Senate Budget Committee is set to mark up a budget resolution that would include border and energy items but leave out thorny tax issues that the House is trying to work through, opting to hash out those particulars in a second bill later this year.
Senate Republicans are set to pitch Trump on a two-bill strategy at Mar-a-Lago Friday night.
Top House Republicans, however, are brushing aside any notion that the Mar-a-Lago meeting and markup are adding pressure to their operation.
“We have had a really strong coalition and the president saw that today,” Scalise told reporters. “The president saw a pretty broad cross-section of our conference and we got into a lot of detail. So I have no idea which senators are going, what they’re gonna talk about, that’s their business. We’ve got to take care of our business. The House is taking care of the House’s business.”
Already, though, the chamber is blowing through a self-imposed timeline. After an ideological cross-section of House Republicans met with Trump at the White House earlier on Thursday, Johnson said he believed the group would “be able to make some announcements” by Friday. House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), similarly, said “Before we go home, we’re going to have something,” referring to the House breaking for the weekend on Friday.
But leaving the Capitol on Thursday night, top lawmakers said some matters remained unresolved. McClain said there are “very, very, very few” issues left to resolve.
Among those are the exact costs of some of the cost-cutting proposals that are meant to offset some of the expensive Trump priorities, such as no tax on tips and lifting the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.
McClain told reporters earlier in the day — between the White House meeting and late-night gathering at the Capitol — that lawmakers still had to “verify” that some cuts they planned to make would be acceptable to the entire conference.
“Some of the cuts that we’re gonna make, we have to verify,” McClain said. “We have to make sure that these are palatable cuts that don’t hurt some members and that we can actually do what we can do.”
Scalise said that Republicans were looking into how to take impacts of growth or savings that into account, given they might not be reflected in the traditional Congressional Budget Office (CBO) method of evaluating budgetary effects of spending bills.
“There’s going to be real, dramatic growth in the economy for individual families, more money in somebody’s paycheck, and ultimately that will be quantified. But CBO’s method of coming up with dynamic scoring on that is going to be different than OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] and other people. So we’re going to be looking at the most accurate models,” Scalise said.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) was notably positive, calling the Thursday of marathon meetings “probably the most productive day I’ve had in Washington.”
Also in attendance at the late-night meeting in the Speaker suite were Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.), and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
