EXCLUSIVE — Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) wants his fiscal hawk counterparts in the House to put the brakes on adopting the Senate’s legislative blueprint for President Donald Trump’s tax, border, and defense agenda.
Dozens of House Republicans are standing firm against a so-called budget resolution backed by Trump, a stalemate that Johnson urged them to continue for maximum leverage on additional spending cuts.
“There’s no reason for the House to rush and pass the Senate version of the budget resolution right now,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “Let’s make sure that everybody engages in this process, and we actually deliver the pre-pandemic-level spending, as opposed to having it be promised to us.”
Johnson argued that the budget resolution, a framework to advance policy priorities under so-called reconciliation with only a simple majority, does not need to be formally adopted until just before Congress is ready to pass its final legislation.
“Every time you pass something, you get a little bit closer, and the pressure builds to just accept whatever we passed,” Johnson said.
His remarks came as a handful of Republican holdouts from the House met with Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) at the White House Tuesday afternoon as part of the two sides’ latest lobbying efforts.
The proposal was adopted by the Senate last week and includes a $5 trillion increase in the federal debt ceiling, putting the House and Senate on different pages for spending offsets. The House version requires $2 trillion in cuts, while the Senate treats the figure as only an aspirational goal.
“The president was very quick to put out a statement about his support for the reconciliation package that the Senate passed, and he is counting on House Republicans to pass it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were the lone Senate Republicans who opposed the budget resolution. Ron Johnson supported it despite advocating that the House now delay its adoption.
The Wisconsin senator, a leading budget wonk, sees the opportunity for increased leverage on things such as codifying Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts into law and creating a budget review panel comprised of lawmakers and White House officials to approve government spending line-by-line.
“Let’s hold off,” he said. “Let’s make sure that we get that process, get the minimum amount of spending that we [have] the votes for, and then proceed to pass the Senate budget resolution and enter the reconciliation process.”
TRUMP’S BUDGET CHIEF SHOWS ‘TOTAL’ COMMITMENT TO SHRINKING GOVERNMENT
Meanwhile, Senate Republican leadership urged the House to swiftly adopt its budget resolution to advance Trump’s policy agenda.
“As we get into the reconciliation process, we’re going to be very committed to doing as much as we possibly can on deficit reduction,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said. “At the end of the day, what this does is it unlocks budget reconciliation and unleashes all the things that we want to accomplish on behalf of the American people, and that can only happen when the House and Senate pass the same resolution.”
