WASHINGTON — Multiple House Republican lawmakers vowed on Saturday to reject the sweeping budget plan that Senate Republicans passed overnight.
Reps. Andy Harris, R-Md., and Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the chairs of the House Freedom Caucus and the House Budget Committee, slammed the Senate bill in separate statements Saturday.
Harris said he was "unconvinced" by the topline budget cuts Senate Republicans signed off on overnight, saying, "I can’t support House passage of the Senate changes to our budget resolution until I see the actual spending and deficit reduction plans to enact President [Donald] Trump’s America First agenda."
Arrington called the Senate bill "unserious and disappointing," saying that, "President Trump has been working at warp speed to root out billions in wasteful and fraudulent spending."
He added, “The House followed suit by sending the Senate a fiscally responsible budget resolution that included the entirety of President Trump’s America First agenda—pro-growth tax cuts, border and defense funding, deregulation, American energy production, and enforceable spending cuts that would reduce our nation’s debt-to-GDP putting our budget on a path to balance."
Both lawmakers cited the fact that the Senate bill would enforce $4 billion in budget cuts, while the previously passed House bill would instruct relevant committees to slash $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion from the deficit. Those who oppose the House version of the bill say budget cuts of that magnitude would not be possible without gutting entitlements like Medicaid.
House GOP leadership on Saturday encouraged members in a new "Dear Colleague" letter to adopt the Senate's budget resolution next week.
Republican leaders listed a number of reasons why the caucus should back the recently passed blueprint, casting the budget resolution as the starting point of larger negotiations and emphasizing Trump's support for the plan.
They also referenced ongoing market turmoil stemming from Trump's new tariffs as an argument for why the party needs to quickly coalesce around a tax and spending cut package.
"With the debt limit X-date approaching, border security resources diminishing, markets unsettled, and the largest tax increase on working families looming, time is of the essence. As President Trump said, “Every Republican, House and Senate, must UNIFY," the letter read.
Senate Republicans voted to approve their budget plan in the early hours of Saturday morning with the aim of eventually funding Trump's agenda along party lines in one massive bill, a process that could take months.
The 51-48 vote included support from every Republican except Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. But the tally masks the tensions that emerged in the run-up to the vote, which revealed new fissures within the party about a range of issues — from Medicaid to tax cuts to blowing up the debt — and pointed to how difficult it will be to get a measure through both chambers.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he has “a big concern” about Medicaid cuts in the legislation, and said he only agreed to back the budget after Trump made an “unequivocal” promise to him that the bill won’t cut Medicaid benefits.
Hawley wasn't alone.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that cutting the health insurance program “would be very harmful to people in Maine and to our rural hospitals and other health care providers.”
Collins said the House-passed version of the budget “troubles me greatly, because I believe it inevitably would lead to significant cuts in Medicaid.” The two chambers will have to settle on one bill in order for it to land on Trump's desk.
“But we’ve got a long ways to go,” she said.
Asked by NBC News about concerns from House GOP lawmakers that Senate Republicans didn't approve large enough budget cuts, one Senate GOP aide argued that the $4 billion in budget cuts the Senate approved was a floor, not a ceiling.
“The Senate set a savings floor. Let’s sit down and work together to lock in maximum savings for the American people," the aide told NBC News.
If Republicans avoid Medicaid cuts, the legislation is likely to blow an even bigger hole in the budget through massive tax cuts and spending increases on immigration enforcement and the military, which are core instructions in the budget.
Republican leaders are hoping to hide the cost of their tax breaks by using a budget trick known as “current policy” baseline, which would treat a permanent extension of the expiring 2017 Trump tax cuts as costing nothing. But despite the accounting method the Senate uses for bookkeeping, extending the tax cuts would still add to the national debt.
"The practical consequences of this is that using 'current policy' increases the cost of this bill by $3.8 trillion," Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said on the Senate floor. "It establishes a dangerous precedent. It might be within the rules to do so, but it doesn’t mean that it is wise to do so. And to be a conservative is to know that sometimes you don’t open Pandora’s box, even if you can."
It's also unclear whether Republicans will be allowed to use that method if Democrats challenge it with the parliamentarian and she rules against the approach. Several GOP senators, including Collins and Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, insist they won't overrule the parliamentarian if they don't get their way on the scoring method.
“A red line for me is removing the filibuster; another red line for me is overruling the parliamentarian,” Curtis told NBC News. “Both of those kind of came into play" this week, he said.
Cassidy added, "I have been assured that there is a commitment in other ways to pay for an eventual reconciliation bill."
But nobody knows how that would work, particularly with Republicans taking Medicare and Medicaid off the table, with plans to expand military spending. Social Security is off limits in a reconciliation bill, which only requires a simple majority to pass. That leaves only a small slice of the budget to cut.
And if the bill ends up adding trillions of dollars in red ink without provisions to pay for them, it could alienate conservative hardliners in the Senate, as well as the narrow House GOP majority.
The divisions between Senate Republicans and their House colleagues don't stop there. Apart from House members eying larger spending cuts, there is a crucial faction of House Republicans in high-tax states like New York and California who want an expansion of the state and local tax deduction, which Trump capped in 2017. They insist their votes hinge on it.
But most Republicans in the House and the Senate oppose a bigger "SALT" deduction, which would also be expensive and limit the options for what other provisions the party can include in the bill.
Saturday's Senate vote instructs committees to craft legislation based on the parameters laid out in the budget resolution. It remains unclear whether the Senate and House will agree on the same budget before proceeding, or whether they'll pass separate "reconciliation" bills and seek to negotiate a single version.
Before the Senate voted to adopt the budget, Democrats forced votes on a series of amendments aimed at putting Republicans in a box politically, including one by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to block Trump's tariffs if they cause higher costs for Americans, which GOP senators rejected by a vote of 46-53.
“President Trump’s tariff tax is one of the dumbest things he has ever done as president, and that’s saying something,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “Markets are plummeting. Six trillion dollars in values gone. The odds of a recession are rising.”
