Blog

Hours after Senate Republicans approved their latest budget plan Saturday morning, at least three GOP deficit hawks in the House – the maximum number of R's Speaker Mike Johnson can lose – blasted the package over a lack of spending cuts.

"If the Senate’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ budget is put on the House floor, I will vote no," Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) posted to X on Saturday, adding "Failure is not an option. And the Senate’s budget is a path to failure."

Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris also chimed in, saying he "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 Trump’s America First agenda."

Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) said he "certainly can't support it as written" Thursday night.

House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) called the plan "unserious and disappointing" Saturday morning, but didn't go so far as to explicitly say he would oppose it.

As noted above, Johnson cannot lose more than three Republicans on a party-line vote with his 220-213 majority, which doesn't bode well considering that several other House Republicans have characterized the Senate's plan as fiscally irresponsible, and insist that any budget plan should at least be deficit-neutral, while any tax cuts should also be tied to tax cuts. The Senate's plan, however, essentially kicks the can down the road once again on these issues by providing different targets to critical committees in the House and Senate, Politico reports.

In a Saturday letter to their members, Johnson and the other top three House GOP leaders said that approving the Senate budget would "allow us to finally begin the most important phase of this process: drafting the reconciliation bill that will deliver on President Trump’s agenda and our promises to the American people."

"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," they wrote.

The wildcard here is of course, President Trump, who has previously leaned on key holdouts to muscle through an earlier House budget vote. This week Trump demanded that "[e]very Republican, House and Senate, must UNIFY" behind the Senate plan."

"Big business is not worried about the Tariffs, because they know they are here to stay, but they are focused on the BIG, BEAUTIFUL DEAL, which will SUPERCHARGE our Economy," he wrote on Friday, referring to the reconciliation bill.