House GOP fails to clinch tax cut deal
Hard-liners demand federal deficit reduction
by: David Morgan
Reuters
MIAMI - A three-day meeting of U.S. House Republicans, meant to jump-start President Donald Trump;s $4 trillion tax cut agenda, ended on Wednesday 01/29/2025] without a deal as party fiscal hawks refused to move ahead unless the plan reduced the $1.8 trillion federal deficit.
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House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson called the meeting of his conference this week [01/29/2025] in the hope of reaching consensus on a budget blueprint while they huddled at Trump's Doral resort in Miami.
..... The hardliners' opposition - and concern about the nation's growing $36 trillion debt, which Congress will need to act on this year [2025] - could block the tax cut plan in a House where Republicans hold a slim 218-215 majority that is expected to fall soon to 217 seats.
..... "The Republican Party has to stick together, Trump told, the group at the start of its meeting on Monday. [01/27/2025] "It'd be different if we had a ... 30-person majority. But we don't. Behave to help leadership."
..... With Republicans also holding a 53-47 Senate majority, Trump is pushing lawmakers to extend his 2017 tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year, [2025] provide funds to tighten border security , depot undocumented immigrates and bolster military spending. The cost of the tax extension alone would surpass $4 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank.
..... Republicans can currently afford to lose the support of no more than one House member if they want to pas the tax cuts over what is expected to be united Democratic opposition. this week's [01/27-29/2025] meeting showed Republican opposition was wider spread.
..... The leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom caucus warned that the plan could fall short of achieving enough savings to make a meaningful dent in the deficit, a key goal among fiscal conservatives
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"That will stop the process," house Freedom caucus Chairman Andy Harris told Reuters. "There's a broad group of Republicans in the conference who believe we have to be very serious about deficit reduction.
..... Harris said his roughly three-dozen Freedom Caucus members want a budget resolution that calls for a $3 trillion cut in federal government spending over the next decade, and that hard-liners would oppose a plan that identified only half that number of cuts or less.
...... "That would show that we;re not really serious about deficit reduction," Harris said.
..... The Freedom Caucus has repeatedly bucked party leadership over rte past two years and just last month [12/2024] rejected a Trump demand to eliminate the federal government's statutory debt ceiling before he took office.
..... But since he took office, Congress has taken Trump's side on tough votes.
..... House Republicans have circulated options amounting to trillions of dollars in potential spending cuts to programs including Medicaid and government-sponsored health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
..... Those possibilities have raised concerns among lawmakers who worry about the effects on services in their districts, including hospitals that rely on Medicaid funding.
..... "Before I agree to vote for a budget resolution, I want a better understanding of where these cuts are going to come form and how it will affect my district," said Republican Representative Nicole Malliotakis. "I understand we all need to make tough decisions ... but I don't want New York to be disproportionately affected. this needed to be fair."
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House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has blasted the Republican tax plan as "a contract against America" which he warned would hurt working families, the middle class, seniors and veterans and undermine the Medicaid health care program for the poor.
..... Trump has limited the options for Republicans by ruling out cuts to the Medicare and Social Security programs for the elderly - which represent about a third of the $6.75 trillion federal budget - leaving Republicans to consider cuts to Medicaid, government-subsidized health care under the Affordable Care Act and other alternates.
..... "You can talk about specifics in Medicaid. you can talk about specifics in discretionary spending. But it's really not going to be much when you consider the overall budget," said Representative Rich McCormick, a deficit hawk.
..... Representative Blake Moore, a member of Speaker Johnson's leadership team, predicted that Republicans would face frustration in trying to pay for a 2017 Trump tax cut extension costing more than $4 trillion over a decade. "We want to offset that as much as possible. Getting to that sweet spot is going to be very, very difficult," he said.
..... "Getting it down to a consolidated list that we can all agree on - virtually to the single member - is something we haven't historically done,: said Representative Darrell Issa. "The problem is that everything we're dealing with has a constituency."