WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson is laying out a highly ambitious strategy to answer President-elect Donald Trump’s call to pass his agenda in “one big, beautiful bill” — a plan that will test the limits of his wafer-thin Republican majority.
Johnson, R-La., said Sunday that the party-line bill will include provisions about border security, energy, manufacturing and tax policy. He also called for extending the debt ceiling in the same bill and passing it out of the House as early as the first week of April.
That is an exceptionally tall order for a tiny House majority of 219-215 that is expected to shrink even further in the coming months as two GOP members resign to join the Trump administration. When that happens, Johnson won’t be able to lose a single vote without needing help from Democrats until the seats are filled.
Republicans plan to use the budget “reconciliation” process to pass the massive Trump agenda package. That allows them to bypass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, where Republicans have 53 seats — and after Jan. 20, a tiebreaking vote from incoming Vice President JD Vance — and can cut Democrats out of the process.
One bill or two?
Key senators, including Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., have been pushing to break it up into two bills — allowing Republicans to score a quick victory on border funding and take some time to craft a second tax bill.
But Johnson and Trump say they prefer a single package.
“The plan in the House has been one bill. We met for two days over the weekend — two full days of discussion and strategizing with that in mind. And so that’s our assumption right now,” Johnson told reporters Monday. “The Senate has a little different opinion and perspective on reconciliation and what the wisest strategy is than the House. And that’s OK; that’s part of this process.
“We are going to get this mission accomplished,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told NBC News that renewing Trump’s tax cuts, trillions of dollars of which expire at the end of this year, is the more difficult ask.
“If we’re going to do the tax aspect in the first bill, we’re going to have to really saddle up and ride. Because that’s going to be, obviously, the most complicated part,” Kennedy said Monday before Congress certified Trump’s election win. “Ironically, the immigration part, the border security, is probably going to be the easiest thing that we’ll tackle.”
To appease lawmakers and Trump allies who want to deal with the border immediately, House and Senate Republicans will bring a series of immigration and border security bills up for votes in the coming weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.
“We’ve got six months to a year to demonstrate to the American people that we’re going to bring change,” Kennedy said. “Now, whether you do it in one bill or two bills, frankly, I can teach that round or flat. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chair of the Budget Committee, which will oversee the Senate process, warned against a one-bill strategy.
“I’m very worried,” he said Sunday on Fox News. “If we don’t put border first and get it done, it’s going to be a nightmare for our national security. … If you hold border security hostage to get tax cuts, you’re playing Russian roulette with our national security.”
Thune also weighed in Monday, saying Republicans are “working through” how to proceed when he was asked about one versus two bills.
“The process issues here are a lot less important than the results,” he told reporters.
House Ways & Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., said Trump’s preference for a single bill means the debate is settled.
“The House is doing one bill,” he said. “It has been decided.”
Limitations on the bill
The 50-vote reconciliation process means the package must follow strict rules and be limited to matters involving taxes and spending. Under what’s called the “Byrd Rule” (named for late Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.), senators from either party can challenge parts of a reconciliation bill that don’t meet those criteria. The Senate parliamentarian must rule whether those provisions are really about taxes and spending or not — and if not, they’re stripped out.
The only way to avoid that is to overrule the parliamentarian, which even some hard-line rank-and-file Republicans are already saying they prefer not to do.
“We’re pretty committed to preserving the filibuster, and that’s kind of like blowing up the filibuster,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a Trump ally, said last month, adding that Republicans “don’t need to change policy” to achieve their goals on the border.
A serious complication is Johnson’s call to use the party-line bill to lift the debt ceiling, which Congress will need to do this year to prevent an economically calamitous default on U.S. obligations. It’s an issue many Republicans hate to deal with, usually requiring Democratic votes, and Johnson’s majority includes plenty of members who have never voted to raise the country’s borrowing limit.
“I don’t know what amount he’s talking about or what time frame, but if you’re going to increase the debt ceiling, you need real cuts. That’s it. It’s that simple,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said in an interview Monday.
“We suck at cutting. If we could cut 12 cents I’d freaking throw a God-darn parade,” he said, before making clear he was joking about the latter.
Roy declined to identify a dollar amount. “We need meaningful, significant cuts. I wouldn’t want to pre-negotiate that,” he said, making it clear that “we need to decrease deficits.”
“The whole point of reconciliation is to get to deficit neutrality,” he added.
That will be very difficult to achieve in a bill that would be likely to add trillions of dollars to the long-term debt by extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts before they expire at the end of this year. Trump is also calling on Congress to attach his “no tax on tips” proposal, which is projected to increase the cost of the package.
There are other potential nuisances that Republicans may encounter. A massive package goes against perennial GOP demands to legislate in smaller, single-subject bills. And an undertaking of such magnitude would have to be negotiated by party leaders, which frequently raises hackles among conservatives who say legislation should be developed from the bottom up at the committee level.
In a Truth Social post Sunday night, Trump called for Congress to advance his agenda in “one powerful Bill.” But on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Monday, he kept the door ajar to the two-bill strategy, saying he sees the advantages of it.
“I favor one bill. I also want to get everything passed. And you know, there are some people that don’t necessarily agree with it. So I’m open to that, also,” Trump said. “My preference is one big, as I say, one big, beautiful bill. Now, to do that takes longer. You know, to submit it takes longer, actually. But, so it’s a longer process. I would say I’d live with that. … To me, it just is a cleaner, it’s cleaner. It’s nicer. Now, with that being said, we’d get some border work done a little bit earlier, et cetera, et cetera.”
Kennedy said Trump and Republicans need to make that decision quickly and get to work.
“I just want to know what the president thinks. I just want to have an agreement. Again, I’m not wedded to either one bill or two bills,” he said. “I just think we need to all get in the same room and say, OK, here’s our game plan. And some will be happy, some will be sad. Because there’s some people that feel strongly in the Senate that we ought to split them up. But I understand the House’s position, too. We can probably clear a lot of that up with the president with a phone call.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
