WASHINGTON — No sooner had Senate Republicans voted to begin work on $340 billion budget bill focused on funding the White House’s mass deportations and border security agenda than President Donald Trump threw it into turmoil.
Trump on Wednesday criticized the approach from the Senate Budget Committee chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and sided with the House GOP’s broader, if politically difficult, plan that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and other priorities. Senators wanted to address those later, in a second package.
Vice President JD Vance was on his way to Capitol Hill to confer privately with Republican senators.
“Unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” Trump posted on social media.
Trump wants the House’s version passed as a way to “kickstart” the process and “move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”
The Senate’s Republican leadership is scrambling after being blindsided by the post.
“As they say, I did not see that one coming,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
Thune had engineered the two-bill approach as a way to deliver an early victory for the White House and had pushed the Senate forward while the House is away on recess this week, saying it was time to act. Thune was meeting privately in his office with Graham.
“We’re planning to proceed, but obviously we are interested in, and hoping to hear with more clarity where the White House is coming from,” Thune said.
The sudden turn of events means more upheaval in the difficult budget process. Republicans have majority control of the House and Senate, but face big hurdles in trying to put the president’s agenda into law as Democrats prepare to counter the onslaught of actions from the White House.
Late Tuesday, Republicans had pushed ahead on the scaled-back budget bill, on a party-line vote, 50-47, in what was supposed to be the first step in unlocking Trump’s campaign promises — tax cuts, energy production and border controls — and dominating the agenda on Capitol Hill.
But it also comes as the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency effort is slashing costs across government departments, leaving a trail of fired federal workers and dismantling programs on which many Americans depend. Democrats, having floundered amid the initial upheaval coming from the White House, have emerged galvanized as they try to warn the public about what is at stake.
“These bills that they have have one purpose — and that is they’re trying to give a tax break to their billionaire buddies and have you, the average American person, pay for it,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York told The Associated Press.
Schumer convened a private call over the weekend with Democratic senators and agreed on a strategy to challenge Republicans for prioritizing tax cuts that primarily flow to the wealthy at the expense of program and service reductions in health care, scientific research, veterans services and elsewhere.
“This is going to be a long, drawn-out fight,” Schumer said.
The Senate’s budget process begins this week, with an initial 50 hours of debate followed by an expected all-night session with lots of attempts to amend the package.
The Republican package would allow $175 billion to be spent on border security, including money for mass deportation operations and building the U.S.-Mexico border wall, in addition to a $150 billion boost to the Pentagon and $20 billion for the Coast Guard.
Republicans are determined to push ahead after Trump border czar Tom Homan and top aide Stephen Miller told senators privately last week that they are running short of cash to accomplish the president’s immigration priorities.
Trump met with Republican senators last month, expressing no preference for one bill or two, but just that Congress “get the result.”
The Senate Budget Committee said its package would cost about $85.5 billion a year, for four years of Trump’s presidency, paid for with new reductions and revenues elsewhere that other committees will draw up.
Eyeing ways to pay for it, Republican senators are considering a rollback of the Biden administration’s methane emissions fee, which was approved by Democrats as part of climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and hoping to draw new revenue from energy leases as they aim to spur domestic energy production.
The House GOP bill is multiple times larger, with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $1.5 trillion in spending reductions over the decade across Medicaid health care programs, food stamps and other services used by large swaths of the country. The cuts could ultimately grow to $2 trillion to appease hard-right conservatives.
The budget plans are being considered under what’s called the reconciliation process, which allows passage on a simple majority vote without many of the procedural hurdles that stall bills. Once rare, reconciliation is increasingly being used in the House and Senate to pass big packages on party-line votes when one party controls the White House and Congress.
During Trump’s first term, Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass the GOP tax cuts in 2017. Democrats used reconciliation during the Biden presidency era to approve COVID relief and also the Inflation Reduction Act.
