House Democrats are united against the Republicans’ budget plan. But heading into this week’s vote on the resolution, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wants to ensure that all of his troops are in the chamber to register that opposition when the package hits the floor.
In a Monday letter to all House Democrats, Jeffries noted that the vote will be razor thin, whichever way it falls, and urged his colleagues to be on hand to optimize their powers to block President Trump’s domestic agenda before it can get off the ground.
“Given the expected closeness of the vote, it’s imperative that we are present with maximum attendance,” Jeffries wrote.
Jeffries’s task is both simple and arduous. Simple, in the sense that it’s always easier, on Capitol Hill, to rally the minority party against the partisan proposals of the majority. And House Democrats are firmly united against the GOP’s budget plan.
But without the Speaker’s gavel, Jeffries and his Democrats are also powerless to block GOP bills — if Republicans coalesce behind them. With that in mind, Democrats are leaning heavily on the one indirect power they do have — public messaging — in hopes that a voter backlash against the details of the GOP budget bill sways vulnerable Republican lawmakers to vote against it.
Jeffries noted that some House Republicans have already experienced that backlash in public forums in their districts over the Presidents Day recess — an uncomfortable trend, for the GOP, that he’s hoping Democrats can compound.
“Over the last week, concerned citizens across America, from the Heartland to the Central Valley of California, the Upper Midwest to the Deep South, the Northeast suburbs to Southwestern towns, made clear that they do not support the House Republican budget,” Jeffries wrote Monday.
“As we defend the American people, House Democrats will continue to amplify the stories of everyday Americans whose lives are being turned upside down by the Trump administration and extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”
The message comes as Republican leaders are scrambling to unite their divided GOP conference behind a massive budget resolution designed to pave the way for enactment of Trump’s ambitious domestic agenda for his first year back in office.
The package features a crackdown on immigration, an increase in domestic energy production and $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to be partially offset by $2 trillion in cuts to other federal programs. It would also increase spending for the military and border security, while hiking the debt limit by $4 trillion.
The resolution is supported by a vast majority of lawmakers in the House GOP conference, including conservatives demanding steep reductions in spending on federal programs to offset the deficit impact of the loss of federal revenues resulting from the tax cuts. But a handful of moderate Republicans are balking at the size and scope of the federal cuts, particularly as they might affect Medicaid patients.
Those holdouts say they’re ready to vote against the GOP budget package when it hits the floor, unless GOP leaders can provide convincing evidence that the cuts to Medicaid and other safety-net programs don’t erode benefits for low-income people in their districts.
Republican leaders have very little room with which to play. With their current majority — 218 to 215 — they can afford one GOP defection. Two would sink the bill.
It’s that math problem that Jeffries and Democrats are hoping to exploit, attacking the GOP budget as a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of the working class — and all but daring vulnerable Republicans to vote for it.
Maximum Democratic attendance during this week’s vote, Jeffries said, will help with that effort.
“[F]ar-right extremists are determined to push through $4.5 trillion of tax breaks for wealthy Republican donors and well-connected corporations, explode the debt and saddle everyday Americans with the bill by ending Medicaid as we know it,” Jeffries wrote Monday.
“We must be at full strength to enhance our opportunity to stop the GOP Tax Scam in its tracks.”
