GOP senators warn Trump agenda will be slowed by internal divisions  

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has cautioned GOP colleagues that the Senate isn’t likely to pass President Trump’s border security, energy and tax agenda until July, at the earliest, and some Republican senators are warning the bill could drag well into the fall.

Much of Washington’s attention has focused on the rocky path Trump’s agenda faces in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) slim majority means he can only lose one GOP vote and still pass GOP legislation.

But Republican senators are warning that getting a major package through the Senate will take months longer than has been publicly discussed, due to the sheer size of Trump’s ambitious agenda and internal Republican divisions over an array of policy questions.

While Thune has told Republican senators he wants to move a budget resolution in the “next work period” before the April recess to show progress on Trump’s agenda, the “finished product” is still months away.

“Thune and others have said they don’t think it’s realistic we’ll move the finished product until the end of July,” a Republican senator said of Thune’s projected timeline for moving Trump’s agenda.

“Thune said he thought that the House’s timeline on this was totally unrealistic and that the House doesn’t have their ducks in a row, and their budget resolution has to be completely reworked, and this idea that we do it by April or May is just ridiculous,” the source said.

Johnson said in January that House Republican leaders were “targeting April” for final passage of a budget reconciliation package that would extend the expiring 2017 tax cuts and address border security, energy reform and defense spendings.

Johnson told CNBC in an interview on March 12 that he put the reconciliation bill “on a very aggressive timetable for the very important reason that we need to get to the certainty [for the business environment] as soon as possible.”

“I’ve put on an aggressive timetable to try to get a vote on the one big, beautiful bill, the reconciliation package, on the House floor before Easter. If we do that, you’re pushing it over to the Senate for them to act upon — it’s conceivable you could get this to the president’s desk by the end of April or early May. Certainly before Memorial Day,” he said.

Republican senators, however, say that timeline is totally unrealistic given internal party divisions on tax policy, defense spending and proposed cuts to entitlement spending.

A second Republican senator said Senate Republican leadership has warned that the reconciliation package may not get passed until late July or even September.

“Thune’s been having these small-group discussions, [and] in the one I was in, Senate Republicans were all over the map. There was no consensus,” the GOP senator warned.

The lawmaker predicted the lack of consensus among Senate Republicans may require the House take the lead to keep Trump’s agenda from being delayed into the fall.

“I’m hoping that the House has a little clearer meeting of the minds than we do,” the source said.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last month that the House-passed budget needed “a major overhaul” before it could pass the Senate.

Most Republican senators support adopting Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo’s (R-Idaho) strategy of using a “current policy” baseline to estimate the cost of the reconciliation package, which wouldn’t count an extension of the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as adding to the deficit.

But there are a few dissenters within the Senate Republican Conference who worry that simply coming up with a way to score an extension of the tax cuts as deficit-neutral wouldn’t accurately reflect the fiscal impact of the legislation.

Semafor reported earlier this month that Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) have raised questions behind the scenes about using Crapo’s “current policy” baseline to project the cost of the reconciliation package.

Cassidy has expressed his concern about projected federal deficits and their impact on interest rates.

In addition to the disagreement over how to score the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, GOP lawmakers need to decide what additional tax cuts to put in the package.

House Republicans from high-income, high-tax blue states want to lift the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions.

And earlier this month, Trump renewed his call for Congress to exempt tipped income and Social Security benefits from taxation. Those proposals could cost up to $200 billion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years, respectively.

Graham said he’s still hoping to pass the reconciliation package through the Senate before the August recess.

“I think that’s the goal. I hope so,” he said.

Crapo, who’s leading the negotiations on the tax portion of the package, declined to predict how long the talks might take.

“I can’t tell you how close we are,” he said.

Another major stumbling block is the instruction in the House-passed budget resolution to the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the federal deficit by $880 billion over 10 years.

Budget experts say that while the language does not mention Medicaid specifically, the only way to meet that target is to make huge cuts to the program, which pays for the medical services of low-income and disabled people, as well as nursing home costs for many seniors.

Republican senators including Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), John Boozman (Ark.) and Jim Justice (W.Va.) have either expressed opposition to deep Medicaid cuts or have emphasized the importance of the program to many of their constituents.

“I would not do severe cuts to Medicaid,” Hawley told HuffPost in February.

“I don’t like the idea of massive Medicaid cuts,” he said.

Boozman told The Hill that Medicaid cuts “sure would” impact constituents in Arkansas.

“It depends what they’re going to do,” he said, noting that the House-passed budget resolution doesn’t detail explicitly what mandatory spending programs will be cut.

“We don’t have $800 billion in cuts in play right now. It’s what the House wants to do,” he said. “What I’ll be concerned about is the final negotiated process, which we’re a long way from.”

Justice told reporters on Thursday that many West Virginians depend on Medicaid but added that he would support reforms that strengthen the solvency of the program.

“From the standpoint of Medicaid, West Virginia has a gigantic participation. Really and truly we have concerns and we’re going to have to watch as this thing filters all the way through,” he said of the reconciliation package.

“At the same time, we know there’s waste like we can’t imagine,” he said. “We can try as best we possibly can to make the right moves on the chessboard to fix it or to make it better.”

Defense spending is a third major point of disagreement.

The House-passed budget proposal calls for a $100 billion direct spending increase for defense needs, but Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) says that’s inadequate to build up the defense industrial base to meet the growing threat posed by China and other adversaries.

Wicker wants the reconciliation package to include at least $175 billion for defense programs.

He said he voted for the continuing resolution to fund the government until Sept. 30 despite what he saw as its failure to meet the Pentagon’s needs, because of the expectation that the reconciliation package would make up for the shortfall.

“We’re going to need more than $150 billion in the reconciliation bill, if we’re going to be able to defend the country,” he said. “It needs to be well over $150 billion. We’re looking north of $175 [billion].”