House Gop Leaders Vow To Push Forward With Budget Vote

House Republican leaders told their members Sunday they still plan on muscling a reworked Senate budget blueprint through the House this week, according to multiple people briefed on the plans, even as fiscal hawks say there is enough opposition to tank the measure should it come to a vote.

Several House Republicans have vowed in recent days to oppose the Senate framework, including Rep. Chip Roy of Texas — a leader of the hard-right bloc — and some other members of the House Freedom Caucus. With a 220-213 majority, Speaker Mike Johnson can lose only three Republicans on a party-line vote if all members are present and voting.

“The Senate plan that passed will easily fail on the House floor,” one House Republican said Sunday afternoon as GOP leaders tried to rally the rank-and-file on a conference call with their members. The fiscal hawk was granted anonymity, as were the other people, to speak candidly about private conversations and the state of play.

On the call, GOP leaders argued that House Republicans desperately need to advance the Senate-approved plan without changes or else trigger another month of delays in the process, according to two other people with direct knowledge of the conversation.

POLITICO first reported that Johnson planned to force the reworked Senate budget resolution through without changes. With their eye on a vote as soon as Wednesday, he and other GOP leaders know they will need Trump's help in pushing it through. But, according to the three people, leaders want to get the number of holdouts down before they ask for more reinforcement from Trump and White House officials.

GOP hard-liners, meanwhile, are digging in against the plan, with the public whip count of Republican "nos" growing at what aides consider an alarming rate. Besides Roy, Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania have expressed outright opposition. Others, including Budget Chair Jodey Arrington of Texas, have registered dismay without explicitly promising to vote against it. And Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the only GOP holdout on a prior budget vote last month, is expected to oppose the revised plan as well.

The new budget plan combines the House GOP's original framework of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts with the bare-bones Senate plan, which guarantees only $4 billion in spending cut targets and more room for tax cuts that aren't fully paid for. Adopting the fiscal framework is a necessary step for Republicans in passing their sweeping tax, border and energy package; without it, Republicans won't be able to sidestep a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

If the vote is poised to fail this week, senior Republicans are discussing whether to make changes to the plan and send it back to the Senate for approval — requiring burning more floor time with a grueling "vote-a-rama" — or sending GOP leaders and committee chairs from both chambers to a conference meeting to hammer out an agreement. Harris on Saturday floated another option: simply moving forward with the drafting of the final megabill without having a budget blueprint in place.