By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives will try to take its first step on Tuesday toward enacting President Donald Trump’s tax-cut and border agenda, giving Speaker Mike Johnson hours to corral wayward Republicans into supporting the effort.
Johnson appears to lack the near-unanimous support he needs from his 218-215 Republican majority to deliver on Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax-cut plan, which would also fund the deportation of migrants living in the U.S. illegally, tighten border security, energy deregulation and military spending.
A handful of hardline Republicans have said they oppose a budget blueprint that seeks to cut $2 trillion of spending over ten years to pay for the agenda, with apparent support from billionaire Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency is targeting government workers and programs.
“If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” Representative Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, one of at least three Republicans who want deeper spending cuts, said on the social media platform X on Monday night.
“That sounds bad,” replied Musk, who owns X.
The U.S. federal government currently has more than $36 trillion in debt, and the House measure would clear it to take on another $4 trillion. Current funding for federal agencies runs out on March 14, and Congress will face another deadline later this year to raise the government’s self-imposed debt ceiling or risk triggering a catastrophic default.
Johnson also faces uncertainty among a large number of lawmakers who represent swing districts and large Hispanic constituencies, who are concerned that deep spending cuts could harm programs that provide food assistance, scholarship grants and the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor.
Some of those lawmakers appeared to be more upbeat late on Monday, saying they had been assured that aid to Medicaid beneficiaries who are citizens and federal support for the program would not be scaled back.
“We’re getting some more clarity. We’re seeing that they are in good faith, trying to adjust the numbers to give us some more assurances,” Representative Nicole Malliotakis said, who represents a Republican-leaning district in New York City.
The House was due to vote at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) on whether to begin debating the budget resolution, which both the House and Senate must pass to unlock a parliamentary tool that Republicans will need to circumvent Democratic opposition and the Senate filibuster to enact Trump’s legislative agenda later this year. A vote on passage of the resolution was set for around 6 p.m.
But whether those votes proceed as scheduled will depend on a behind-the-scenes negotiations in the hours leading up to them.
Johnson, of Louisiana, has sounded optimistic about passing the budget resolution but has avoided predictions that Republicans would succeed on Tuesday.
“We expect to get it done this week,” he told reporters on Monday.
Doubts about House Republicans’ unity prompted Senate Republicans to enact their own budget resolution as a Plan B ploy last week: a $340 billion measure that covers Trump’s border, defense and energy priorities but leaves the thornier issue of tax policy for later in the year.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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