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House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are pushing hard to get that “big, beautiful bill” onto President Donald Trump’s desk by the end of April — but they’re going to need him to start leading big-time to get it done.
Elements of the bill include 1) renewing and extending the 2017 tax cuts, 2) raising the federal debt limit, 3) boosting spending on Trump priorities like border security and 4) cutting billions in spending over the next decade.
Any one of those is a heavy lift when Republicans have a beyond-narrow majority in the House, and limited ways of end-running the Senate filibuster at a time when Democrats’ base is pushing to immolate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for “helping Trump” by preventing a government shutdown the other week.
Plus, various rules — for “scoring” tax cuts and spending hikes; for what’s allowed in “reconciliation” measures that can end-run the filibuster, and so on — turning the already-complex process of passing any major bill into something like an Escher blueprint of a Rube Goldberg machine for the legislative sausage factory.
And Thune and Johnson must each herd their own very different packs of cats through the maze.
Just one example: To keep the House Freedom Caucus on board, Johnson’s looking at a plan that cuts far more future federal spending that what Thune’s senators prefer.
Run that disagreement through the perverse “pay for” rules that none of these Republicans really believe in, and the House ultraconservatives’ obsession could wind up translating into a smaller overall tax cut, or even an increase in some tax rates above current law.
And never mind that the 2017 tax-rate cuts led immediately to solidly growing federal revenues and record gains in average wages: Under the rules, simply keeping those rates unchanged counts as increasing the federal deficit.
Changing the rules to calculate according to current law, rather than the imaginary benefits of stiff tax hikes, is possible — but it’ll take a presidential speech or three to bolster moderate Republican spines against Democrats’ fury and the tut-tutting of the Beltway media.
The prez will also likely need to make the case to the nation on how GOP Medicaid “cuts” are all about ending waste, fraud and abuse, from ending the scamming by rich liberal states like New York and California to ending taxpayer coverage of border-jumpers’ routine health care.
Trump has shown he can make the difference, intervening decisively several times this year to get key bills passed, but jumping in at the last minute won’t be enough now.
If he doesn’t put major muscle in — making public speeches as well as private phone calls — the drive can collapse at any of multiple points. (Don’t forget how an angry Sen. John McCain torpedoed Trump’s partial ObamaCare repeat four years ago.)
The president is realizing how steep the challenge is: That’s why he regretfully pulled his nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik to become his (butt-kicking) UN envoy.
If he gives his maximum attention to bolstering the bill — it’s his agenda, after all — it’ll get done.
If not, it’ll fall apart: Taxes will soar, he’ll get stuck cutting some rancid deal to avoid hitting the debt limit, Democrats will be emboldened to stymie the rest of his agenda — and the economy will sputter into recession ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Start fighting hard now, sir, or that Golden Age is a goner.