The Senate is making a move to advance its two-bill strategy on President Trump’s agenda following a lack of agreement among Republicans in the House on a topline budget number.
But House Republicans are still trying to stick the landing on the one-bill plan favored by Trump, attempting to make its immense price tag more acceptable to budget hawks by shortening the length of the proposed tax extensions.
“What we’re talking about [is] tinkering with the length of the time of the tax cuts and figuring out what the total number would be versus what we can get on spending cuts,” budget hawk Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told reporters this week.
Republicans met Tuesday night to talk about a five-year extension of the tax cuts, rather than a decade-long extension under which current individual tax rates and a number of business provisions are set to expire at the end of this year.
Without any budget cuts, the Republican legislative agenda could cost as much as $7 trillion over the next ten years. That’s according to an estimate by Andrew Lautz of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a number that Roy appeared to confirm.
“What we’re talking about is … $7 trillion top line spending,” Roy said, arguing that budget cuts to the tune of $1 trillion, as floated by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), were insufficient. “We believe we need more spending restraint than that.”
— Tobias Burns
