Dear Dispatch readers,
Congress is out of session, so I don’t really know what to do with myself. I guess it is a bit of a break after a busy week.
Speaker Mike Johnson pushed Republicans’ budget resolution, a compromise between GOP leadership in the House of Representatives and Senate, through his chamber Thursday. It’s an important step toward using the budget reconciliation process to put through President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda on issues of taxes, spending, and funding for border security and national defense. It sure wasn’t easy though.
House leaders scheduled a vote for last Wednesday night on the Senate’s amendment to the resolution it passed earlier this year. Fiscal hawks and others were concerned that the new language did not contain a strong promise of the spending cuts they sought, and enough had threatened to vote against the legislation to kill it. Nevertheless, Johnson pushed forward. As the vote drew near, Johnson met with holdouts in a room outside of the chamber, keeping the rest of the House (and your devoted congressional reporter) waiting for over an hour.
Eventually, hope was lost and Johnson punted the vote to Thursday morning. Before the new vote time, he held a press conference with Senate Majority Leader John Thune to announce an agreement to cut $1.5 trillion over 10 years in the eventual reconciliation bill. That, plus a reported commitment from Johnson that holdouts could remove him if he does not follow through on his assurances, seemed to seal the deal.
The House passed the resolution Thursday morning. Now comes the hard part: Congress now has to figure out what to cut to achieve its spending goals, and with pledges not to cut welfare programs directly—only to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse” in them—we’ll see what they can do.
—Charles
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