Johnson, Trump Whip House Deficit Hawks On Senate Budget

President Donald Trump is pushing House Republicans to “quickly” adopt the Senate’s new budget framework, and Speaker Mike Johnson says “speed really matters.” But fiscal hawks still aren’t sold on the clock’s-ticking pitch.

House GOP leaders plan to tee up a final vote midweek on the fiscal roadmap they need to adopt in order to draft and pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” along party lines later this year. Deficit hawks, irked that the Senate didn’t match their mandateof $2 trillion in spending cuts to balance out tax cuts, still want to make more tweaks to the budget measure that’s already ping-ponged across the Capitol three times in less than two months.

Trump and Johnson’s leading argument: Republicans need to get cranking now on Trump’s legislative agenda, with Johnson hammering home the point that progress is especially critical as the president’s tariffs continue to rattle financial markets.

“The message that I’m delivering is that speed really matters, and time is not on our side,” Johnson said in a brief interview Monday night. “And I think that the sooner we get this done, the better.”

The robust whip operation has already been underway for days. White House officials called holdouts over the weekend, and Johnson stopped by the House Freedom Caucus’s weekly meeting Monday night, where loyalty to leadership is typically sparse. White House Budget Director Russ Vought and his deputy, Dan Bishop, also at one point headed into the off-campus meeting location.

“Kumbaya” was the speaker’s message as he entered the gathering just before 8 p.m., after meeting earlier in the evening with a group of moderates worried about Medicaid cuts and other pieces of the plan.

Upon leaving the Freedom Caucus confab, Johnson described a “great conversation” and “thoughtful deliberation” and vowed to press ahead: “We're gonna try to move this this week.”

But several hard-line Republicans are still saying they would vote “no” on the Senate budget blueprint as it stands now, with about a dozen more leaning against it. And unless the House GOP’s fiscal hawks can get on board before lawmakers are scheduled to depart Thursday for a two-week Easter recess, Trump won’t be able to tout progress until late April — at the earliest — on the GOP’s dream bill of tax cuts, military spending, border security investments, energy policy and more.

Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), a member of both the Budget and the tax-writing Ways and Means committees, was frank in his belief that the Senate product just isn’t tenable on the House side — now or two weeks from now.

“If people can’t decide now that we can agree on some floor for spending cuts, then it probably won’t happen later,” said Smucker in an interview.

He added, “The sooner that we can understand … that there just isn’t the support for that resolution to pass here, the quicker we can get to another plan.”

Smucker and other fiscal hawks are interested in starting conference negotiations with the Senate and exerting their power to make changes in that venue, avoiding the potential for a failed floor vote if Johnson brings the Senate-adopted measure to the floor as promised this week.

Trump is tired of waiting. “There is no better time than now to get this Deal DONE!” the president said on social media Monday night. “THE HOUSE MUST PASS THIS BUDGET RESOLUTION, AND QUICKLY — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, among the Republicans unwilling to back the Senate’s budget, said he expects he and others could get a personal pitch from the president in the coming days.

“I understand he’s going to be meeting with a lot of us. So we’ll hear him out,” Norman told reporters Monday.

But as to whether Trump could possibly change his mind, Norman said, “I don’t see it.

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) also raised doubts Monday that the whip operation would yield the votes needed.

“We’ll see if there’s a vote. They are whipping it right now, and I don’t think it’s going to pass,” Self said. “There’s got to be a change in the numbers.”

The Senate-adopted budget is headed to the House Rules Committee on Tuesday to be teed up for floor debate on Wednesday, though House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said he doesn’t think GOP leaders will follow through with those plans because they haven’t locked in enough support.

Across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that there is no backup plan if the House rejects his chamber’s latest offering.

The Senate’s revamped budget framework was, like the House’s budget, cobbled together to win support among disparate factions of members. But while the House plan would call for deep spending cuts in the GOP’s filibuster-skirting reconciliation bill, the Senate bill was crafted to assuage concerns from lawmakers that those cuts could force them to slash Medicaid and other safety-net programs.

"This bill reflects the way the Senate process works and how to thread the needle and get something across the finish line,” Thune said, noting that the Senate added different deficit reduction mandates for its own committees to fulfill in writing the final package than those of the House.

“We left their instructions alone,” he said of the House’s budget mandates, “and so they can still proceed with their plan."

Ben Jacobs, Jordain Carney and Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.