Republicans Have a Lot of Decisions to Make

All of the issues dividing GOP lawmakers on Trump’s agenda.

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, March 26, 2025. Thanks for waking up to politics.

The signature legislative package of President Biden’s opening months in office was the American Rescue Plan Act, or the ARP.

A $1.9 trillion stimulus package designed to aid the U.S. economy during Covid-19, Democrats passed the bill using the reconciliation process, which allows majority parties to ram through pieces of legislation with only party-line support (without being subject to the Senate filibuster), as long as the bill in question deals with spending or revenue.¹

The first step in the reconciliation process is both the House and Senate passing an identical budget resolution that lays out what they plan to do in the reconciliation bill. The budget resolution for the ARP was introduced on February 2, 2021. Democrats used their slim majorities to pass it through both chambers three days later, on February 5.

Later that month, on February 24, Democrats introduced the actual $1.9 trillion bill. It passed the Senate on March 6, and then the House on March 10. The next day — March 11 — Biden signed his first sweeping piece of legislation into law.

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When Republicans won (similarly slim) majorities in 2024, they began talking about a reconciliation timeline that wasn’t quite that ambitious — but would still set them up for early passage of a party-line legislative package.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Fox News in January that he wanted the House to pass the reconciliation bill by April 3; the measure could then clear the Senate, and be sitting on Trump’s desk by the end of April or “certainly by May.”

Those sorts of timelines are easy to dream up, but harder to execute.² Now we’re approaching the April 3 target, and the House and Senate have yet to even agree on the budget resolution that unlocks the reconciliation process, much less a reconciliation bill itself.

House and Senate leaders met with Trump administration officials on Tuesday and left relatively — by Washington standards — united. Punchbowl News declared this morning that Johnson and his counterpart, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), finally “seem to be singing from the same song sheet on their reconciliation plans.”

After weeks of wrangling about whether to pass Trump’s legislative agenda — tax cuts, domestic spending cuts, and new border security and defense spending — in one reconciliation measure or two, Johnson and Thune have finally settled on the “one big beautiful bill” approach.

But much more than that is unsettled. Here are all the decision points that lay ahead for Republicans as they attempt to turn Trump’s priorities into a cohesive piece of legislation:

* Whether to use the bill to raise the debt ceiling. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the U.S. is set to hit its debt limit sometime between July and October. Republican leaders are hoping to use the reconciliation bill to raise the debt ceiling (that way, they won’t need Democratic support to do it), a plan endorsed by Trump, Johnson, and — as of Tuesday — Thune.

But several Senate Republicans are opposed to the idea, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has threatened to vote against a reconciliation bill that includes a debt limit hike. Many House conservatives have also never voted to raise the debt ceiling; last month, they voted for a budget resolution to unlock a debt limit increase, but going forward with the actual thing is a different matter.

* How much spending to cut. The House budget resolution called for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. But Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) says the Senate wants to be “more aggressive than the House”; per Punchbowl, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has said he won’t vote for anything less than $2 trillion in spending cuts. But if you’re going to call for such expansive cuts, you also have to decide…

* What spending to cut. The biggest flashpoint here is Medicaid. The House budget resolution called for $880 billion in cuts to come from the Energy and Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction. As this New York Times graphic shows, that will be impossible to accomplish without cutting into Medicare or Medicaid (but, most likely, Medicaid).

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has said he’s “not going to vote for Medicaid cuts”; other Republicans with large populations of Medicaid beneficiaries in their states have also pointed to the program as a red line. But it will be difficult to cut $1.5 or 2 trillion without reaching into entitlements.

Republicans are also split on how much to cut the clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the other Biden-era reconciliation bill. 21 House Republicans have announced opposition to completely cutting the tax credits, while others want to repeal the IRA entirely.

* How to count the tax cuts. Some Republicans want to use a technique known as the “current policy baseline,” which would declare that — for the purposes of counting the deficit impact of the reconciliation bill — extending the Trump tax cuts for 10 more years wouldn’t add anything new to the deficit, since it is simply keeping in place the current status quo. (Even though the tax cuts have an expiration date, so really the status quo without the bill would be for them to end.) Under this plan, instead of acknowledging that the tax cuts cost $4 trillion, they would now be deemed to count $0.

That is, uh, not a small difference, and several Republican senators are skeptical, including Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Todd Young (R-IN), per Punchbowl. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has also expressed concerns. The party has yet to reach consensus if they want to attempt the gimmick; it is also unclear whether it would be allowed under Senate rules.

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That is a lot of disagreements to hash out, each with major consequences for the legislation.

House leaders put out a statement this week calling on the Senate to “take up the House budget resolution” as quickly as possible. But Senate Republicans show no interest in doing so; instead, they want to craft a new resolution, incorporating some of the changes outlined above.

“The House bill is dead in the Senate,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said. “There’s no way I would vote for the House bill. It’s not good on taxes, it’s not good on spending, it’s going nowhere.”

But if the Senate passes an amended resolution, then the House will have to pass it, too. Only then can the two chambers begin drafting, and voting on, the actual reconciliation bill.

The leadership’s new target is for both the House and Senate to pass a compromise resolution by the week of April 7 — later than Johnson had originally planned to pass the entire bill. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) has said that the final reconciliation package could then land on Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.

But, once again, they might find that timeline hard to achieve — especially with so many divisions remaining on both the resolution and the bill. Thune has reportedly said that a final package probably won’t pass the Senate until July; some senators are warning that the process could end up dragging into the fall.

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More news to know

The Atlantic has released the full text of the Signal group chat where Trump officials discussed a plan to attack Houthi rebels. Intelligence officials, faced with questioning from Democratic senators, testified Tuesday that no classified information was shared, but the latest Atlantic report shows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing specific details that would typically be classified in advance of a military operation:

Screengrab from the Atlantic

National security adviser Michael Waltz — who created the text thread — baselessly suggested in a Fox News interview on Tuesday that Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg could have “deliberately” added himself to the chat. The chat shows that Waltz is the one who added Goldberg.

Several Trump administration officials have already been sued over the chat, with a watchdog group claiming that their use of Signal violated the Federal Records Act. The case has been assigned to Judge James Boasberg, the same judge whose order the administration allegedly flouted in the Alien and Enemies Act case.

President Trump signed an executive order to add a proof of citizenship requirement to federal voter registration forms and threatening to pull federal funding from states that count mail-in ballots after Election Day. The order is set to face legal challenges; the Constitution grants broad authority over elections to the states.

The president also signed an order targeting another law firm and pardoned a former Hunter Biden associate who testified against the ex-First Son.

Democrats scored an upset victory in a Pennsylvania state Senate race on Tuesday, winning a conservative-leaning district that Trump carried with 56% of the vote in November. Democrats have generally overperformed in special elections during the Trump era, as the voters who participate in them — who tend to be older, whiter, and better educated — have moved into their coalition.

A panel of appeals court judges ruled that the administration could stop admitting new refugees but had to accept those who were approved for entry before Trump returned to office.

One federal district judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from terminating funding for Radio Free Europe, while another ordered officials to pause their attempt to deport a Columbia University student who has been involved in pro-Palestinian protests.

As Republican lawmakers mull responses to the raft of court rulings against Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) mused aloud about Congress’ power to “eliminate an entire district court.” He later clarified that he wasn’t threatening a specific course of action.

Trump’s picks to lead the FDA and the NIH, both critics of the Covid-19 response, were confirmed. An analyst who has promoted false claims about vaccines was tapped by the administration to lead a study into links between vaccines and autism.

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The day ahead

• President Trump will participate in a Women’s History Month event at the White House.

• The Senate will vote to confirm former Rep. Dan Bishop to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); Aaron Reitz to be an Assistant Attorney General; and Michael Faulkender to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. The chamber will also vote on passage of a resolution to overturn a Biden-era regulation on digital asset sales.

• The House has no votes scheduled due to the funeral of the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ).

• Hearings to watch: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe will testify before the House Intelligence Committee, where they are sure to face questions on the Signal chat (watch at 10 a.m. ET)… The CEOs of PBS and NPR testify before the House DOGE subcommittee (watch at 10 a.m. ET)

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Before I go…

Here’s something fun: A Swedish ivy plant has sat atop the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office for most of the past 50 years. Generations of presidential staffers have kept clippings of the plant, a souvenir of their time at the White House that has spread the ivy far and wide.

Until now. The ivy has been replaced in Trump’s new Oval Office by a series of gold vessels that now sit atop the mantle. The Washington Post investigated where the ivy even came from — and where it’s located now. Read here (gift link)

1. I know “reconciliation” can sound complicated, but when you hear the word, just remember that you’re hearing about 1) a party’s top legislative priorities which 2) they can advance with only 51 votes, not the usual 60, in the Senate.

2. Whenever you hear a congressional leader — no matter the party — lay out a legislative timeline, mentally add a month or two inside your head.