Two of the Senate’s staunchest fiscal conservatives said on Sunday that they would try to force significant changes to the bill passed by the House last week to deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda, signaling a precarious path ahead for the legislation.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said on CNN that he saw the party-line process of budget reconciliation as “our only chance” to reset to “a reasonable prepandemic level of spending.”
Mr. Johnson accused the House of rushing through the process of putting the bill together and of approving legislation that would ultimately add to the deficit. And he suggested that enough of his colleagues in the Senate felt the same way to be able to enact major changes.
“I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,” Mr. Johnson said.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, another fiscal conservative, criticized the House package, saying on “Fox News Sunday” that it lacked concrete measures to reduce the ballooning national debt. He said that the package was “not a serious proposal,” and that Republicans should cut deeper into major drivers of the debt, including Medicaid, Social Security and food assistance programs.
“Somebody has to stand up and yell: ‘The emperor has no clothes,’” Mr. Paul said. “Conservatives do need to stand up and have their voice heard.”
Their resistance is unwelcome news for Mr. Trump, who has implored lawmakers to quickly pass the legislation carrying his agenda, and for House Speaker Mike Johnson. Last week he attended a closed-door luncheon of Republican senators and urged them not to make drastic changes to the legislation that could imperil its passage through the House.
Some of the budget hawks in the House who lent their support to their chamber’s bill already swallowed considerable reservations about the bill to vote “yes.” Mr. Johnson has warned that any major changes could put their support in jeopardy.
“We’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House,” Mr. Johnson said on CNN on Sunday. “And I have a very delicate balance here, a very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. It’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
A number of Republicans have also said they believe the House bill could cut too deeply into programs their constituents rely on, including Medicaid and some of the clean energy tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s signature climate law passed in 2022.
Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, has become a vocal opponent of the legislation’s provision on Medicaid, and has argued that the bill would harm “working people and their children.”
“Over 20 percent of Missourians, including hundreds of thousands of children, are on Medicaid,” Mr. Hawley said on CNN earlier in May. “They’re not on Medicaid because they want to be. They’re on Medicaid because they cannot afford health insurance in the private market.”
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
Minho Kim covers breaking news and climate change for The Times. He is based in Washington.
The post Fiscal Hawks in Senate Balk at House’s Bill to Deliver Trump’s Agenda appeared first on New York Times.
