GOP Squabbling Shows Passing Trump’s Agenda Is Harder Than Doing Executive Orders

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump takes a maximalist approach to executive power and a chainsaw to federal agencies, Republicans on Capitol Hill are struggling to coalesce around actual legislation to enact his agenda.

In a strikingly passive-aggressive statement on Monday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his top deputies criticized Senate Republicans for not adopting the budget resolution that the House approved last month. In response, a Senate Republican aide noted the House has spent more time on recess than the Senate.

The intra-party sniping reflects the difficult task confronting Republicans in Congress, where they have slim majorities but huge ambitions for legislation that extends more than $4 trillion worth of tax cuts, boosts border security while slashing federal spending in a way that saves significant money while not cutting so deep that Republicans representing moderate House districts won’t vote for it.

The standoff shows the difficulty of actually governing within the constitutional system — in contrast to Trump’s attempts to reshape the government through unilateral actions that have included mass firings and wholesale demolition of federal agencies.

“The House is determined to send the president one big, beautiful bill that secures our border, keeps taxes low for families and job creators, grows our economy, restores American energy dominance, brings back peace through strength, and makes government more efficient and more accountable to the American people,” Johnson and his top deputies said in their joint statement.

“We took the first step to accomplish that by passing a budget resolution weeks ago, and we look forward to the Senate joining us in this commitment to ensure we enact President Trump’s full agenda as quickly as possible,” the House Republicans said.

A Senate Republican aide, speaking anonymously in order to be candid, noted that the Senate has been busy approving Trump’s Cabinet secretaries and that it passed its own budget resolution before the House did. The aide also pointedly noted the Senate has only taken one recess so far this year, while the House has taken three.

“So it’s not like the Senate has been sitting around doing nothing,” the aide told HuffPost, noting the chamber hopes to pass a modified version of the House budget resolution before the next congressional recess in April.

Johnson has set a goal of passing a budget resolution unlocking a filibuster-free path for Trump’s agenda in both houses of Congress by April 7, ahead of a scheduled two-week Easter break. That’s an aggressive timeline given that Republicans are still divided on several key issues, including whether to include large cuts to Medicaid health coverage, use a budget gimmick to make the tax cuts permanent — something that must pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian — and whether to include a hike in the debt limit.

There’s also disagreement about what should go into the final legislation. The House Republican budget only makes room for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, which isn’t enough to permanently extend the temporary cuts Trump enacted in 2017 and also include the various tax cuts he came up with on the campaign, such as no taxes on tips or Social Security benefits. Senate Republicans would prefer to prioritize permanency for the already enacted tax cuts, which will expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t act.

The biggest problem for Republicans, however, will likely be finding agreement on more than $1 trillion of spending cuts, with a number of House and Senate Republicans complaining about the $880 billion in Medicaid cuts envisioned by the House budget resolution.

Democrats last week held dozens of town halls across the country eviscerating Republicans for seeking to cut Medicaid benefits, which provide health coverage for over 70 million Americans.

“Make no mistake, they’re coming after you,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) warned at an event in Scottsdale. “All of this stuff you’re hearing every single day is so they can give a big giant tax cut to people who don’t need a tax cut.”