House Republicans reported “very positive developments” after a marathon meeting at the White House on Thursday focused on passing President Trump’s legislative agenda, predicting that the chamber could move on legislative as early as next week.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), members of his leadership team and an ideological cross-section of lawmakers huddled with Trump and Vice President Vance at the White House for hours to discuss a framework for advancing the president’s legislative wish list, including border funding, immigration policy and an extension of the 2017 tax cuts.
The meeting came days after Johnson was forced to scrap plans to mark up an initial budget resolution amid a conservative revolt over the level of spending cuts. The impasse in the House led top Senate Republicans to announce they would move their own effort to enact Trump’s agenda, threatening to steamroll the House.
Johnson on Thursday after the White House meeting sought to push back on the Senate GOP plans, insisting House Republicans were nearing the finish line — even though a number of thorny issues remain.
“We got out the white boards and we worked out the framework, what we believe will be the path forward,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol after the meeting. “I think we’ll be able to make some announcements probably by tomorrow and we’re excited about that.”
“Very positive developments today,” he added, noting that the negotiations were “very close” and could be wrapped up by Thursday evening. A key group of House Republicans are planning to huddle again Thursday night to hash out more details.
“We’ll have a framework prepared so we can move early next week,” he said.
Johnson said the House Budget Committee could begin working on a budget resolution as early as next week. If advanced out of committee and passed on the House floor, it would unlock the budget reconciliation process — a maneuver allowing Republicans to circumvent a Senate filibuster.
But with Democrats opposed in both chambers, the GOP will need near-unanimity to move the same legislation through the House on their razor-thin majority, a tall task in the ideologically diverse conference.
“The idea would be to get the Budget Committee working, potentially as early as early next week, maybe Tuesday, for a markup for the budget resolution, and then we’ll unlock this process and get it moving,” Johnson told reporters.
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) echoed that timeline, brushing off plans from his Senate counterpart, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), to mark up an alternative budget resolution next week that would include border and energy items but leave out more thorny tax issues — a strategy that contrasts with the House plan.
“The President has been clear in his support from one comprehensive bill that has the security piece and the economic piece, both tax, energy and spending reforms, and his commitment at this point has been unwavering,” he added.
Despite the optimism, some of the largest and most controversial details remain unsettled.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said increasing the state and local tax deduction (SALT) cap, a major priority for blue-state Republicans and an ask from Trump, was discussed but not solved.
Additionally, the group discussed the debt limit — which Trump wants Republicans to increase without making any concessions to Democrats — but did not come to an agreement.
Asked if tax provisions that Trump wants would be made permanent, Scalise said: “Some may be, some may not be.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during the Trump-GOP meeting that Trump laid out tax priorities for the members, including no tax on tips, which was one of his campaign promises.
Those priorities also included, “no tax on Senior Social Security, no tax on overtime pay, renewing President Trump’s 2017 middle class tax cuts… adjusting the salt cap, eliminate all the special tax breaks for billionaire sports team owners, close the carried-interest tax deduction loophole, tax cuts for Made-in-America products.”
“This will be the largest tax cut in history for middle-class working Americans. The president is committed to working with Congress to get this done,” added Leavitt.
Those proposals would be expensive, and are part of the crux of what makes passing Trump’s legislative agenda so difficult. Fiscal hawks in the House want to ensure that the bill is deficit neutral.
Hardline conservatives on the Budget Committee — including Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) — had voiced concerns with the GOP’s initial blueprint. Roy was present at Thursday’s White House meeting.
The Speaker has said he wants to pass the budget resolution on the House floor by the end of this month, and send Trump a sprawling bill by Easter or Memorial Day — a timeline that some House Republicans have said is unrealistic.
After Thursday’s meeting, Johnson brushed off the threat of the Senate leapfrogging the House.
“Our message to our friends and colleagues in the Senate is, allow the House to do its work,” Johnson told reporters. “We are moving this as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.”
Members reported that Trump, who was present for a large portion of the hours-long huddle, was very engaged throughout the meeting, and that his demeanor and deal-making style was critical to getting progress on the matter.
Arrington called Trump “the negotiator-in-chief,” saying the president “set the table for us to push through some things that were sort of what we were hung up on” — but declined to get into details.
“We’re really grateful to the president for leaning in and doing what he does best, and that is put a steady hand at the wheel and get everybody working, and that’s what happened today, so we’re excited about it,” Johnson said.
Trump’s digging in on the details was helpful too, they said. Previously, Trump had led with his priorities but hadn’t got into the nitty-gritty as much.
“The president’s even more involved now in the details, because you know you can talk at the 30,000-foot level for so long. Eventually you got to get into specifics on numbers,” Scalise said.
Alex Gangitano contributed.
