GOP leaders pledge massive spending cuts as House advances Trump agenda

The House of Representatives voted largely along party lines Thursday morning to pass a resolution establishing a budget blueprint to enact much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

Lawmakers voted 216 to 214 with just two House Republicans — Reps. Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — joining with Democrats to oppose the Trump-backed budget resolution. No House Democrats supported the resolution, which in part unlocked more than $100 billion in immigration enforcement funding, authorized new defense spending and allowed for a permanent extension of the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts.

Congressional Republicans are seeking to pass many of Trump’s first-year legislative priorities through the budget reconciliation process, which allows Senate Republicans to bypass the 60-vote filibuster and pass spending and tax legislation by a simple majority vote.

Both chambers have been racing to send the anticipated legislation to the president’s desk, which Trump has called his “one big, beautiful bill.” Speaker Mike Johnson has floated a deadline of Memorial Day. Failure to extend the expiring tax cuts would result in more than a $4 trillion tax increase on households and businesses in 2026.

Johnson’s ambitious timeline appeared to be in jeopardy as House Republicans were initially at an impasse Wednesday night to approve the Senate-amended budget resolution. Roughly a dozen deficit-focused lawmakers, including members of the House Freedom Caucus, refused to support the budget blueprint without firm commitments that the resolution would lock-in significant spending cuts.

“$4 billion in spending cuts in the Senate budget resolution is less than one day’s growth in the budget deficit,” Republican Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the House Freedom Caucus chairman, wrote on X Thursday. “This spending addiction has to stop now.”

However, verbal commitments from Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune Thursday morning to secure at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in a forthcoming bill appears to have been enough to convince Harris, and almost all of the other GOP holdouts to support the budget blueprint.

Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee told reporters Thursday that he would support the resolution to kick off the budget reconciliation process because Thune “went on record” about ensuring significant spending reform in a forthcoming bill.

“We have got to do something to get the country on a more sustainable fiscal path, and that entails us taking a hard scrub of our government, figuring out where we can find those savings,” Thune said Thursday at a joint press conference with Johnson. “Our ambition in the Senate is we are aligned with the House in terms of what their budget resolution outlined, in terms of savings when the Speaker talked about $1.5 trillion.” 

“Our first big, beautiful reconciliation package here involves a number of commitments, and one of those is that we are committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people while also preserving our essential programs,” Johnson said Thursday morning at the press conference. “It’s very important for us to note that we’ll be looking for 1.5 trillion in savings, and I can tell you that many of us are going to aim much higher and find those savings because we believe they are there.”

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told the Daily Caller News Foundation Thursday that she was not confident that congressional Republicans would ultimately include $1.5 trillion in savings in a forthcoming bill.

Though House and Senate GOP leadership are aligned on the need to achieve significant spending reform in the budget bill, the respective chambers have yet to find consensus on which programs to cut.

“At some point, these guys just have to take yes for an answer,” Thune said to reporters following the press conference. “We’re aligned. We’re completely aligned with the House.”

Massie and Spartz justified their votes against the budget blueprint by arguing that the resolution fails to ensure the forthcoming bill does not contribute to the nation’s deficit. Massie wrote on X Thursday morning that the “big, beautiful bill” would keep “spending on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory.”

“I appreciate efforts of my colleagues, but the instructions we voted on today are still setting us up for the largest deficit increase in the history of our Republic, & opening up a ‘pandora’s box’ by changing accounting rules to hide it,” Spartz wrote on X. “In good conscience, I couldn’t vote YES.”

Republican Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman, said in a statement following the vote that he received assurances from Johnson that the Speaker will not consider a final bill that adds to the national debt.

Andi Shae Napier contributed to this report.

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