Trump budget faces setback as House Republican holdouts block action
Washington DC - The US Congress failed Wednesday to pass a budget resolution to tee up President Donald Trump's sweeping proposed tax cuts, after Republican leaders were forced by a conservative rebellion to cancel a vote on the blueprint.
The House of Representatives and Senate are both Republican-led, but fiscal hawks in the House are furious over what they see as insufficient cuts in the plan passed Saturday by the Senate.
The two sides need to adopt identical versions before they can move on Trump's domestic agenda, led by a $5 trillion extension of his expiring 2017 tax cuts, intensified border measures, and boosted energy production.
Several members of Johnson's razor-thin 220-213 majority made clear they would reject the text despite hours of fraught negotiations with their Senate counterparts to eke out more savings – forcing the postponement.
"I don't think we're going to have a vote tonight... maybe we take a little more time," Johnson told reporters at the Capitol, according to Fox News.
Johnson's pledge to get the budget framework to Trump's desk before Congress breaks for two weeks on Thursday now looks in jeopardy as the Republican leadership scrambles for a Plan B.
The party could try to bring the budget resolution to the floor on Thursday, or appease the right wing with changes to the text and send it back to the Senate – meaning delays that would frustrate Trump.
The resolution sets targets for overall spending rather than funding specific programs or changing tax law.
Budget defeat marks a humiliation for Trump
The House had produced its own plan in February, featuring $1.5 trillion in cuts and raising the national borrowing limit by $4 trillion to cover the cost of renewing Trump's tax cuts through 2034.
Senators made big changes when they passed their version, directing their committees to find just $4 billion in reductions and envisioning a $5 trillion hike in the debt ceiling.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington – one of a number of senior Republicans in the lower chamber critical of the Senate's tweaks – called the resolution "unserious and disappointing."
Its defeat marks a humiliation for Trump, who staked political capital on intervening personally on Tuesday, summoning around two dozen holdouts to the White House to bring them into line.
US media, citing sources in the room, reported that the president committed to spending cuts that would go far beyond the Senate plans – whatever ends up on the statute books.
Democrats say the budget is the opening salvo in long-held Republican plans – set out last year in the conservative Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" manifesto – to drastically rein in the federal bureaucracy.
They insist that the framework would trigger a major downsizing of essential services, after weeks in which Trump's tech billionaire advisor Elon Musk has courted controversy by slashing federal agencies.
The efficiencies eyed by Republicans include $880 billion in spending cuts that would have to come mostly from the Medicaid health care program for low-income families.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans for what he called "the largest Medicaid cut in American history in order to pass massive tax breaks for your billionaire donors like Elon Musk."
"House Republicans broke their promise to address the high cost of living and they lied about their intention to enact their extreme Project 2025 agenda," Jeffries said in a letter to his members. "The harm being unleashed by Donald Trump and the (Republicans) is staggering."
Cover photo: REUTERS