Trump Budget Bill Passes on a Wave of Promises and Lies

The ostensible Speaker of the House applauds the real Speaker of the House. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

It was one of those moments Washington insiders love. Tuesday night, after a tense few days of negotiations with wayward GOP congressmen, House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled his budget blueprint from the floor and sent members home only to … reverse the decision and then win the vote by the smallest possible margin. Johnson pulls a rabbit out of the hat again, with a little help from Donald J. Trump, and his “one big beautiful bill” is on course!

Putting aside the hype, what really happened is that the very first stage of the process by which Trump’s legislative agenda may be enacted is roughly half over. Because Trump was extremely tardy in communicating any preference between the Senate’s approach of enacting that agenda in two budget reconciliation bills and the House’s approach of rolling it all into one, the two chambers now have separate budget resolutions laying out a blueprint for the ultimate legislation. The Senate is now expected to defer to the House’s approach but will rewrite the resolution to meet its own needs (Republican senators are reportedly anxious for even bigger tax cuts than the House). So some version of the resolution that passed Tuesday night on a 217-215 vote (Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only member to break party ranks) will be worked out between House and Senate in discussions that could take weeks. Only then will an actual budget reconciliation bill become possible, and all this maneuvering will become very real.

The broad outlines of the House budget resolution provide for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, $1.5 to $2 trillion in spending cuts for “mandatory” programs (i.e., those not subject to annual appropriations), and a $4 trillion increase in the national debt limit. The bill doesn’t provide specifics; it just instructs House committees to cut spending to certain levels. A lot of attention is being paid to the $880 billion in cuts demanded from the Energy and Commerce Committee, since that will almost certainly require major cuts in Medicaid.

A lot of the intra-GOP debate before passage of the resolution revolved around fears among House Republicans from marginal districts about the depth of cuts, particularly for Medicaid, and the desire of House Freedom Caucus types for even bigger cuts, not only for Medicaid and other safety-net programs but for the nonmandatory spending governed by annual appropriations bills. As the clock wound down for the vote on the House floor, Johnson brought in Trump to tell wavering members pretty much whatever they wanted to hear. The president jawboned the hard-core House Freedom Caucus members hungering and thirsting for deeper cuts, as the Washington Post explained:

Trump worked the phone earlier in the day and during the evening vote series to sway Reps. Tim Burchett (Tennessee), Victoria Spartz (Indiana), Warren Davidson (Ohio) and Thomas Massie (Kentucky) to support the plan.

All the holdouts except for Massie flipped. …

Burchett said his conversation with Trump was the key factor to changing his mind. …

There was no quid pro quo, but the president assured me that he would work toward cuts, and he’s never lied to me.”

In the end, the most persuasive argument may have been Johnson’s incessant reminders that the budget resolution didn’t mention specific cuts, giving those who wanted more and those who wanted less plausible deniability, as HuffPost reported:

To sway the moderates, Johnson and his lieutenants in the House GOP have fashioned a new talking point that insists the budget would not actually cut Medicaid because the word “Medicaid” isn’t in the resolution.

“It doesn’t even mention Medicaid in the bill,” Johnson said.

Eventually, of course, decisions on budget and tax cuts will have to be made, though perhaps not until the cherry blossoms have bloomed and faded and summer’s heat strikes Washington. In the meantime, separate negotiations over appropriations are underway to keep the federal government operating when stopgap spending runs out on March 14 (though some short-term extensions are likely), which in turn may revolve around Democratic demands that the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE stop usurping congressional spending prerogatives and violating civil service protections. How it all fits together is anybody’s guess at present, but so long as Democrats remain united, every step will require more promises, pressure, and lies from real Speaker of the House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.