By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — As House Republicans missed another deadline Friday to produce a massive budget package of tax cuts and slashed spending, Senate Republicans jumped ahead, unveiling a more tailored $340 billion blueprint focused on President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda and bolstered U.S. defense spending.
Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged his own chamber’s plan for Trump’s big budget bill would slip into the weekend as House Republicans work overtime to agree to the details. After a lengthy meeting a day earlier with the Republican president at the White House, they are racing to hammer out a package that includes some $4 trillion in tax breaks, massive program cuts and a possible extension of the nation’s debt limit.
“We have just a few final details to iron out,” Johnson said at the Capitol. “It’s going well, and I’m very excited about where we are and the fact we’re going to be moving this forward.”
But the repeated setbacks are frustrating GOP lawmakers as they argue among themselves and they fail to show progress on Trump’s signature legislative priority during the first 100 days of the new administration with unified party control of the House, the Senate and the White House.
At stake are countless Trump campaign promises: making tax cuts that expire at the end of this year permanent, cutting spending on federal programs and ensuring the administration has enough money to launch his deportation operation and finish building the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The package is also expected to meet Trump’s demands to raise the nation’s debt ceiling to allow more borrowing and prevent a federal default.
Trump’s message as he popped in and out of the nearly five-hour meeting Thursday at the White House was simple: Get it done.
Instead, Senate Republicans jumped in Friday as they prepared to head to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, for a Friday night dinner as they push ahead with their own scaled-back proposal.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said “help is on the way.”
Graham announced Friday his panel, too, would hold hearings next week to kickstart the process on the Senate GOP’s slimmed-back bill.
The dueling approaches between the House and the Senate are becoming something of a race to see which chamber will make the most progress toward the GOP’s overall goals.
As the House struggles, Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota have proposed a two-step approach, starting with a smaller bill that would include money for Trump’s border wall and deportation plans, among other priorities. They later would pursue the more robust package of tax break extensions before a year-end deadline.
The Senate Budget Committee said that the proposed new spending would finish the border wall and increase the number of Border Patrol agents and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
The increased defense spending would include money for growing the U.S. Navy and build an integrated air and defense missile system to counter threats to the U.S.
The committee said the budget plan would also include proposed cuts elsewhere in federal spending to offset the $85.5 billion annual cost, which would total $340 billion over the four years of Trump’s second term.
The two chambers are racing to deliver Trump’s agenda with small majorities and little room for error. Johnson, R-La., needs almost complete unanimity from his ranks to pass any bill over objections from Democrats. In the Senate, Republicans have a 53-47 majority, with little room for dissent.
It’s a heavy lift for Congress, and House and Senate GOP leaders have been desperately looking to Trump for direction on how to proceed, but the president has been noncommittal about the details — only pushing Congress for results.
It all comes as congressional phone lines are being swamped with callers protesting cost-cutting efforts led by billionaire Elon Musk against federal programs, services and operations.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday the president and lawmakers discussed “tax priorities of the Trump administration,” including Trump’s promises to end federal taxation of tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay. Renewing tax cuts Trump enacted in 2017 also was on the agenda, she said.
House Republicans reconvened late into the evening at the Capitol to make sure all the Republicans would be on board with the emerging plan, particularly the spending cuts that have the potential to cause angst among lawmakers as they slice into government services Americans depend on from coast to coast.
But on Friday they were not quite there yet, lawmakers said, and would stay at it through the weekend.
The House GOP largely wants what Trump has called a “big, beautiful bill” that would extend some $4 trillion in tax cuts and include funding for the president’s mass deportation effort and border wall. It includes massive cuts from a menu of government programs — from health care to food assistance — to help offset the tax cuts.
House GOP leaders are proposing cuts that would bring $1 trillion in savings over the decade, lawmakers said, but members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus want at least double that amount, some $2.5 trillion.
The chair of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, said his panel is preparing to hold hearings on the package next week.
Arrington said he can “see the runway” on a budget plan. “We’re not far. We’re not far.”
He said of meeting what he has described as a “stretch goal” of $2.5 trillion in savings over 10 years: “The opportunity and potential is there, but there’s got to be the will of the body.”
Trump has repeatedly said he is less wed to the process used in Congress than the outcome of achieving his policy goals.
If the House GOP’s initial meeting with Trump at the White House last month was a good first date, this one was “whether we want kids or not,” McClain told reporters.
“This was a very different meeting,” she said. “It was still positive, optimistic. But it was getting down to business.”
Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this story.
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