As House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., feverishly works to finalize the details of a massive package that includes major portions of President Trump's agenda, many Senate Republicans are dismissing the legislation before it is even finished in the House.
"Unfortunately, it's a sad joke," Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson said Wednesday
"Wimpy," and "anemic" were the words Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., used to describe the spending cuts in the proposal.
The House package, which the speaker still says he wants to advance through the chamber before the Memorial Day recess, aims for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to offset the costs of making the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent. It also contains tax breaks that Trump campaigned on in 2024 — no taxes on tips and overtime — but those provisions are temporary.
Some conservatives in the House are pushing for $2 trillion in cuts– but that's not far enough for Johnson who wants spending levels to revert back to what they were pre-pandemic. Sen. Johnson told reporters that he believes it was a mistake for leaders to try to pass so much of Trump's agenda in one single bill, instead of three separate pieces of legislation that could be considered individually. As a result, he said he'd oppose the House bill "as it's currently constructed."
Other opponents include Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who has been a vocal critic of the Medicaid program changes House Republicans have proposed. He publicly rebuked fellow Republicans' efforts to restructure the health care program for low-income, elderly and disabled in a recent editorial published in the New York Times.
Hawley specifically opposes adding co-pays for some Medicaid recipients and freezing state taxes on hospitals that help boost how much federal money goes to rural hospitals as items that are non-starters.
"I'm not going to support this bill from the House, in this form. I think it's clear it's got to change before it can pass the Senate," Hawley told CNN on Wednesday.
A chance for the Senate to make changes
One solution could be for Senators to put their own stamp on whatever the House passes.
"It's a good start," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday.
Cornyn told NPR he expects the Senate rules will impact the final version of the bill. Republicans are using a feature of the budget process known as reconciliation to advance the legislation without the threat of a filibuster by Senate Democrats — but that process has special rules and procedures.
"I'm confident the Senate will have its own ideas and we will pass a bill here that may differ some from the House but then ultimately have to work out the differences," He said.
Cornyn didn't weigh on his GOP Senate colleagues' criticisms on various pieces of the House bill, saying, "I'm more interested in saving the American people from a multi-trillion dollar tax increase."
New York Rep. Nick LaLota told reporters "dozens" of his fellow House Republicans have told Speaker Johnson they are worried they will vote for a package that is disregarded by the Senate.
"Those members are insisting that either the Senate go first or the Senate and the president bless off whatever bill that we're ultimately asked to vote on." LaLota said.
He pointed to the experience in 2017 when some Republicans in Congress at the time backed a bill and felt burned after Trump later called the proposal "mean."
LaLota is part of a group negotiating with the speaker to restore a tax break dubbed "SALT" that allows their constituents to deduct more of their state and local taxes. But any move to increase the cap on the SALT deduction will add to the overall price tag of the bill.
The issue of that deduction, which impacts largely blue states, isn't a major concern among Senate Republicans.
Sen. Paul also said he opposed the House bill's provision to lift the country's borrowing authority by $4 trillion, "I'm not for increasing the debt ceiling 4 or 5 trillion [dollars] — I'm for balanced budget, limited constitutional government, so I'm just not for that."
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