GOP leaders stare down legislative minefield after Trump's Day 1 blitz

President Trump made a big splash with dozens of executive actions on his first day in office, but now comes the hard part: getting Republicans in Congress in line to usher an ambitious legislative agenda through their slim majorities and clashing factions.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other GOP congressional leaders met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday to plan out how to do just that. Their sweeping goals include an extension of Trump’s tax cuts, energy policy reforms, border security measures and funding.

Republicans aim to pass Trump’s agenda through a special budget reconciliation process that will bypass the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and allow Republicans to pass the expansive agenda along party lines — but it will require near-universal GOP agreement, and getting it will be the difficult part.

Heading into the meeting, there were still divisions among Republicans about whether they should try to pack the whole agenda into one bill or break it into two pieces, since reconciliation can only be used a limited number of times in a year. 

But House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) signaled after the meeting that leaders had decided on one bill.

“We’re moving forward with one bill,” Scalise said.

Johnson was less direct but said a plan is in motion.

“We’ve got a plan pretty well-formulated now, and I’m not going to tell all of you all the details of it yet,” Johnson said. “But the party is working in unison. The leaders in both chambers are working in a bicameral fashion, and the president is all on board.”

Thune had originally advocated for a two-bill track to try to deliver border wins to Trump’s desk as fast as possible, but House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) has warned that delaying work on tax measures could risk Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expiring at the end of the year.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus that has also advocated for a two-bill strategy, brushed off concerns about missing that deadline.

“The Trump tax cuts will be extended. How we get there? We’ll figure it out,” Harris said. “They will be extended. That’s the bottom line.”

The clock is ticking as Republicans aim to get the reconciliation legislative vehicle rolling. Johnson said he hopes to have a legislative vehicle prepared for the eventual bill complete by late February, which would require Republicans to coalesce around a strategy very soon — and make major decisions about the broad top-line figures in the bill.

“That’s a very complicated process, because you have to know what those top-line reconciliation numbers are before you can write them into a resolution,” Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) said.

With the resignation of former Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) to become Trump’s national security adviser, Republicans cannot afford to lose more than one vote on the House floor, assuming all members are present and voting. That margin for error will move to zero for a period of time after Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) leaves to become United Nations ambassador.

“The hard work is getting, you know, 218 members of Congress to agree on something,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said. 

Fiscal hawks in the party will put pressure on leaders to keep the legislation deficit neutral, which could be difficult.

“Spending cuts is the No. 1 thing right there, and that needs to happen, and it needs to happen quickly,” said Clyde, a member of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus.

The House Budget Committee Republicans put together a list of 200 potential budget cuts and tax breaks for members to consider for the reconciliation bill.

A number of members from high-tax states such as New York and California prioritize raising the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap as part of any tax package, providing relief to taxpayers who previously were able to deduct more of their state taxes from their federal taxes.

But that could be expensive, clashing with the priorities of fiscal hawks. Scrapping SALT deductions entirely, the Budget Committee estimated, would shrink the deficit by about $1 trillion — but is a move SALT-focused Republicans would never accept.

Some members are frustrated about how long it is taking to get some more specific data for the kind of programs they are prioritizing.

“People have to be honest brokers in the discussions, and if they’re not, and information is being held back, that’s where you’re gonna run into the problem,” one GOP member said.

In the second meeting with a wider group of GOP leaders, Trump emphasized the need for Republicans to stay unified.

“It was more so a 'let’s work together' kind of thing, and let’s accomplish some things,” said Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), vice chair of the House GOP.

Beyond the intraparty dynamics on the reconciliation bill, Republicans will have to contend with meeting Trump’s legislative priorities.

One top Trump item, eliminating taxes on tips, is estimated by the Budget Committee to cost $106 billion over 10 years. Scalise said Trump brought up his no tax on tips campaign trail promise in the Tuesday meeting.

Another Trump priority is the debt ceiling. Trump remains angry about a debt limit deadline that came up during his first term and does not want Democrats to use the must-pass legislation as a leverage point to extract concessions in his second term, as Republicans did with former President Biden in 2023.

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the House GOP policy chair who was at the second meeting with GOP leaders Tuesday, said Trump brings up the debt limit “all the time.”

Republicans had initially thought of raising the debt limit as part of the reconciliation bill to circumvent Democrats using it as a leverage point, but chatter has increased about pairing it with some other kind of must-pass measure — such as disaster aid for California wildfires, or continuation of government funding that runs out on Mar. 14 — in order to avoid even more GOP fiscal hawk demands for spending cuts as a condition of raising the debt limit.

Hern said Trump is leaving the debt limit strategy up to GOP leaders. 

“Whatever it is, he’s perfectly OK with it just long as it gives him some breathing room to get the policies done,” Hern said.

Scalise said leaders are still evaluating the debt limit.

“We haven’t made a final decision on the debt ceiling,” Scalise said Tuesday, adding, “Obviously, you’re looking at government funding as well, and there’s possibly an avenue where we would have the debt ceiling in the government funding bill.”

Mychael Schnell contributed.