Trump Blows Up Senate Budget Bill at the Last Minute

Lindsey Graham and John Thune before Trump threw them under the bus. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP Photo

For weeks, congressional Republicans have been begging Donald Trump to resolve a very basic difference of opinion between the House and the Senate on the best strategy for implementing his legislative agenda. He has refused to “play referee” in any definitive way. So the Senate moved ahead with Lindsey Graham’s budget blueprint. It calls for two reconciliation bills: first, a “quick win” beefing up border-security and defense spending at the cost of some disposable Biden clean-energy subsidies, and then a later measure enacting tax cuts. The Senate budget resolution was on the brink of a Senate floor vote, while the House was still struggling to put together a one-bill blueprint that its tiny GOP majority could unite upon to enact Trump’s agenda in a single big push.

Then Trump suddenly decided to drop a bomb on the Senate with a Truth Social post Wednesday morning:

The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to “kickstart” the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.” It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

This is a real kick in the teeth for Graham and Thune, leaving them with a choice of rebellion or irrelevance. It looks like Thune is inclined to make sure Trump doesn’t change his mind again:

Complicating the situation even more, Vice President J.D. Vance addressed a Senate Republican lunch after Trump’s bombshell, and told them perhaps their efforts could be viewed as a Plan B in case the House budget plan imploded. So senators plan to move ahead despite the negative vote of confidence from the president.

An implosion in the other chamber does seem like a real possibility. At the moment, the House effort is, as Politico puts it, “in trouble”:

Speaker Mike Johnson is staring down at least a dozen Republican holdouts on the budget blueprint he wants to put on the House floor in the coming days — and he can only afford to lose one member and still approve the resolution along party lines.

Johnson and his whip team are using the current week-long recess to ramp up engagement with undecided Republicans, including seven members — if not more — who have raised serious concerns about deep cuts to Medicaid in the House GOP budget resolution. Several other members are wary of a move to raise the debt limit as part of the plan.

Johnson is dealing with a two-front war. House members from marginal districts are worried about blowback from the deep domestic spending cuts (a cool $2 trillion) the draft budget resolution calls for. House Freedom Caucus types want even deeper cuts, particularly if they are expected to vote for a debt limit increase, which they all hate. In both cases, as Politico notes, it’s the size and shape of Medicaid cuts most at issue, with swing-district Republicans wanting to go light and HFC hardliners wanting to go very heavy.

They certainly aren’t getting much help on that front from Trump. In an interview with Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, Trump said Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid were off-limits to cuts: “Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something. It’s going to be strengthened. Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched.”

So Trump has at least temporarily thrown his Senate allies under the bus and cast his lot with the House, while simultaneously making the key issue confounding House Republicans much more difficult. For dessert, through Vance he is encouraging the Senate to move ahead on a budget blueprint that he hopes will prove to be a complete waste of time. That’s quite a tonic for the troops.

Perhaps Trump really does, as cynics have suggested, want to slow down congressional action on his agenda so that DOGE and OMB can see how much budget-cutting they can get done via sheer exercises of executive power. Whatever his ultimate plans, he has done an excellent job of reminding congressional Republicans not to do a whole lot on their own without a green light from the Boss.

This post has been updated.