The Hill
House Republican efforts to pass President Trump’s agenda bill have been complicated over key policy hang-ups that threaten to delay passage or derail it altogether.
The Hill’s Congressional team writes:
“House Republicans are falling further apart in negotiations on a reconciliation package that represents President Trump’s first-year legislative agenda, with just weeks to go before their self-imposed deadline.”
Among the many internecine feuds dividing the GOP on Capitol Hill at the moment:
Fiscal conservatives won’t support a budget reconciliation bill that adds to the deficit, but moderates won’t touch big drivers of the federal budget, such as Medicaid.
In the past, obstinate lawmakers have gotten on board with what they view as imperfect legislation by “cajoling centrists to take politically painful votes with hopes that they would help realize a more right-leaning final product,” according to The Hill’s Mychael Schnell.
That won’t fly this time around, moderate lawmakers say.
“There is a specific appetite amongst 20-plus Republican members to vote only on something that is real and that could actually become law rather than this more conservative thing that can’t get the vote,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) says some controversial proposals cutting Medicaid won’t be in the final bill, but he might consider “per capita caps” on Medicaid in states that expanded the program in recent years.
Meanwhile, Republicans appear to be at an impasse on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap. Blue state Republicans are promising to sink any bill that doesn’t raise the cap.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is capitalizing on the dissent, saying that if Republicans are serious about helping taxpayers in high-tax states, they’ll do nothing and let the cap expire at the end of the year, as scheduled.
“If nothing happens — if there is nothing done with respect to the state and local tax deduction cap by the end of the year — you know what happens? It goes away,” Jeffries said. “So anything that Republicans are doing that relates to a cap actually will increase taxes on the American people, not lower taxes.”
Senate Republicans are watching with alarm.“Sooner or later we have to pass the same thing, and I’m worried that this is potentially a train wreck,” one Republican senator told The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. “We can’t really get on the same page.”
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