For Lloyd Smucker, The Gop’s Spending Cuts Have To Be Good

Lloyd Smucker isn’t a member of the House Freedom Caucus. He doesn’t do fire-breathing Fox News hits. And he doesn’t talk trash about Republican congressional leaders. In no way, in fact, has the 64-year-old Pennsylvania lawmaker ever been considered among the House GOP’s many problem children.

Until now.

A committed fiscal conservative, Smucker has emerged in recent months as a key player in high-stakes negotiations over the GOP legislative agenda, where he has locked arms with the well-known rabble-rousers in the Freedom Caucus to push for drastic cuts in federal spending.

Last month, he pushed through a budget amendment that would make an additional $500 billion in cuts over 10 years if Republicans follow through with the full suite of tax cuts they are targeting. And this week, he was part of a holdout group that held up final approval of the budget until Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and President Donald Trump made firmer commitments to slashing federal spending.

Smucker and the other holdouts came along Thursday morning, voting to finalize the budget plan and move forward with the domestic policy megabill that could touch myriad parts of the federal government, from taxes to health care to border security to the military. But they also warned they will not be ignored as the final bill comes together.

“We’ve got to reduce spending to put the country on a better path fiscally,” Smucker said in a recent interview. “I think the disagreement is, some of us really believe that the [budget plan] is an important foundation on which to build a good bill. And so we want to ensure that some of the principles that all of us agreed to are included.”

Smucker’s involvement in the most recent budget mutiny sent a particularly sharp message to GOP leaders: The thirst for big spending cuts goes deeper than the usual suspects on the MAGA right. While Smucker is deeply conservative, he’s also known as a team player in the Capitol leadership suites and among lobbyists in downtown Washington.

“He’s just a man of principle and deep conviction and that principle and conviction intersected with our colleagues in the Freedom Caucus,” said House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington in an interview after the budget vote.

Smucker holds a coveted seat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, as well as a slot on the usually sleepy Budget Committee. But the latest GOP governing trifecta made that latter spot crucial given its key role in writing fiscal instructions for budget reconciliation — the special process Republicans are using to sidestep a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

Suddenly, Smucker found himself with outsize influence as an essential go-between between key committees, party leadership and hard-liners — and a rare opportunity to make good on the promises of small government and fiscal responsibility he ran on since he was first elected in 2016 to represent Pennsylvania Dutch country.

“He was an absolute warrior in this process,” said Arrington. “We wouldn't have gotten the commitments to a fiscally responsible budget reconciliation bill if Lloyd Smucker was not involved and leading.”

Smucker and Arrington worked to put a strict $4.5 trillion cap on tax cuts — far less than the $5.5 trillion that Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith told members he’d need to achieve all of Trump’s campaign priorities. Smucker also crafted an amendment that reduces the amount of tax cuts Smith can enact if the GOP comes up with less than $2 trillion in spending cuts.

This week, he was pushing to amend the budget plan that would closely tie tax cuts to spending cuts. That language would have set the cumulative spending cut target at $2 trillion. If Republicans fell short of that number, then the amount to be spent on tax cuts would be reduced by the difference.

GOP leaders rejected making further changes to the budget framework, which would have required another lengthy debate and voting process in the Senate. But Johnson did sign a memorandum committing to “maintaining linkage between provisions that result in a deficit increase ... and provisions that reduce federal spending” and delivering a “fiscally responsible product.” He also put his own job on the line as collateral in a private meeting.

“The commitment we received, which I based my vote on, was that we would go beyond what the Senate had included in their instructions,” said Smucker after he stood down and cast a vote for the Senate-approved plan. “That floor of $4 billion was unacceptable to all of us that were part of this group.”

That group is pledging to stick together as the potentially thorny process of assembling the megabill continues. Smucker is not the only odd bedfellow in the Freedom Caucus-dominated alliance. Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona, another Ways and Means member with strong views on fiscal discipline, was also part of the holdout group pushing for steep spending cuts.

The alignment of fiscal hawks far beyond the usual suspects on the hard right represents a pain point for House GOP leaders, and for Trump, as they try to balance various party factions as they write a passable bill.

Smucker said that with Republicans in charge of all three branches of government, it is a not-to-be-missed chance to act on the party’s long-standing campaign promises to rein in spending and improve the nation’s fiscal trajectory.

“If we don’t change course, we’re going to see some sort of economic calamity, some sort in the not-too-distant future, in my opinion,” he said. “So I think this is our opportunity to at least take the first step towards fiscal sanity.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.