President Donald Trump is pressuring GOP lawmakers to pass a “big, beautiful bill” that will combine his legislative priorities. But the devil is in the details.
Members of Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-Louisiana) caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives are having disagreements on what a megabill should ultimately look like, and Senate Republicans don’t necessarily see eye to eye with House Republicans on the specifics.
In an article published on April 20, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports that Republicans in Congress are “rapidly running out of ways to pay for” Trump’s agenda.
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“Without finding some new ideas,” Bolton explains, “the GOP risks adding trillions of dollars to future deficits by passing Trump’s agenda — something many conservatives are loath to do. Outside observers are expressing pessimism the Republicans will land on ideas that have enough support to get passed into law.”
Trump and some of his allies, including trade adviser Peter Navarro, are claiming that his steep new tariffs will pay for his legislative priorities. But former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), who chaired the Senate Budget Committee in the past, strongly disagrees.
Gregg told The Hill, “I just don’t see them getting the money. There’s no ‘there’ there, to be quite honest about it. If they want to spend money, they’re going to end up putting it on the debt. They’re not going to get it out of tariffs, either. You have Navarro running around saying they’re going to get $600 billion in tariff revenue. That’s absurd.”
Gregg continued, “It’s basic economics. You raise the price on it, people stop buying it…. It’s all a joke, to be honest with you, when it comes to money saving and reducing debt. This president doesn’t care too much about debt.”
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Gregg is critical of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he dismisses as “a lot of flamboyance and very little substance.” DOGE is helping the Trump Administration carry out mass layoffs of federal government employees.
The former GOP senator told The Hill, “This DOGE group is throwing up a lot of smoke but is basically doing it with a small candle. They’re going after marginal discretionary events, which basically generate very small savings. So they’re not going to get it out of the discretionary accounts. They’ll get some, but it’s not going to be big.”
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, believes it is unrealistic to have major tax cuts without spending cuts.
MacGuineas told The Hill, “If you take all the big pots of money off the table, it becomes very hard to find enough savings to offset $4, $5 — or more — trillion in tax cuts, let alone bring the debt down, which is the stated goal of many members. People say you can’t touch benefits for anything, you can’t raise taxes. OK, then we’re going to have a debt crisis. That is the result of not talking about benefits and/or taxes.”
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Read Alexander Bolton’s full article for The Hill at this link.
