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WASHINGTON — A key House Republican holdout on President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to provide tax cuts, border security, defense spending and green energy clawbacks is still calling for deeper spending cuts to chip away at the national debt — as the legislation heads for a critical vote Sunday.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of several GOPers who tanked the bill in the House Budget Committee on Friday, says he and other fiscal hawks are still hoping for hundreds of billions dollars more in savings to help reduce the nation’s $36 trillion debt.
The Texas Republican huddled with White House officials and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on Saturday to voice those concerns — but didn’t commit to backing the legislation before the Budget panel reconvenes Sunday at 10 p.m.
Afterwards, Roy told Trump ally Steve Bannon that the deficit hardliners still “think there ought to be work requirements that kick in immediately” for those on Medicaid — rather than delaying those until 2029 — and gutting $400 billion in green subsidies from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“We’re trying to move those up, so that would front load some of the savings. More importantly, I think it would create economic growth by getting people in the workforce,” he said on an episode of “War Room” of the Medicaid work requirements.
On the president’s pledge to eliminate the so-called “Green New Scam,” he added: “The President campaigned on terminating it, ending it right out of the gate.”
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), whose panel compiled the spending cuts to the Biden Energy Department programs and grants, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week that just $6.5 billion in unspent funds would be returned.
House Republican leadership has touted the bill’s more than $1.5 trillion in total spending cuts, more than half of which — $900 billion — was achieved in the Energy panel’s markup, but Roy and others don’t view that as enough to offset a $4 trillion debt ceiling hike included in the legislation.
The bill, which is being considered via budget reconciliation, would also extend $3.8 trillion to keep Trump’s 2017 tax cuts; give even more tax breaks on tips, overtime and Social Security; and boost border security and defense spending by around $300 billion.
That could provide for the hiring of at least 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to help with Trump’s mass deportations of illegal aliens.
New York Republicans have also been angling for higher State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions after the Budget panel released a $30,000 cap — still triple what it was under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from Trump’s first term.
“We all want tax relief, particularly for hardworking Americans and small businesses, but I’m not going to get put over the barrel because everybody’s freaking out that we got to deal with the taxes, especially at the top end of the bracket and so forth, if we’re not doing what we need to do on the spending side,” Roy told Bannon.
“We are not on a path to get to three or three-and-a-half percent of GDP as our deficit unless we do more in this bill,” he added.
Trump posted on his Truth Social Friday that the legislation will also “kick millions of Illegal Aliens off of Medicaid” and “Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’”
“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!” he raged.
Democrats have attacked the bill by pointing to congressional estimates that it could force up to 8.6 million Americans off their health insurance benefits under the program — but Republicans have said the figure includes up to 1.4 million illegal immigrants as well as others who are unnecessarily benefitting.
Last year, the federal deficit grew by $1.8 trillion, roughly equivalent 6.4 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has projected that the overall bill will add as little as $3.3 trillion to the deficit in the next decade — or as much as $5.2 trillion if the tax cuts are made permanent.
The reconciliation process allows measures to be passed by a simple majority of both chambers of Congress so long as only the debt ceiling, spending and revenue are changed, not policy.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) expressed confidence Thursday that it would advance out of the House Budget and Rules Committees in the next week — and receive a final vote in the full chamber before Memorial Day.
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