Speaker Johnson Addresses Budget Questions: ‘Take a Deep Sigh of Relief’

The House Republican leadership is still working on ironing out differences between members surrounding the budget reconciliation process as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., gave an update Tuesday that he expected progress to be made this week.

The budget reconciliation process is an important tool to ensure that President Donald Trump has the funding and support he needs to follow through on his ambitious campaign promises involving the border, energy, national defense, and tax cuts.

Johnson said at a press conference alongside fellow leaders, “On the budget. … Yes, a markup is going to be scheduled for Thursday. That’s the intention. The budget chairman, [Jodey] Arrington, just spoke to the [Republican] Conference and set it [at] that. We’re going to be rolling out the details of that, probably by tonight. … We’re right on the schedule that we need to be on.”

Markup is a process where members of the House committees that are handling the reconciliation bill can offer amendments to it.

Budget reconciliation is a process exempt from the 60-vote threshold in the Senate often required to get most bills passed. Instead, reconciliation requires a simple majority. Through reconciliation, Congress can make changes to government spending and revenue levels based on Congress' fiscal priorities. With the current makeup of the Senate, if most Republicans vote in favor of the reconciliation bill, the the process could allow them to pass it without needing votes from Democrats.

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During the press conference, House Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., focused on the GOP's reconciliation plans for tax cuts and deregulation in his remarks.

“If the Democrats who are in the minority got their way, the American people would see a multitrillion-dollar tax increase. House Republicans are not going to let that happen,” said Scalise. 

“That’s part of our bill—is to continue the tax cuts from 2017, keeping those rates stable, adding on the priorities that President Trump talked about in the campaign, like no tax on tips,” he added.

Johnson, when asked by a reporter if he wished to use the budget process to codify Trump’s executive orders, replied, “The reconciliation process is where you’re going to see the lion’s share of that. … We would hope that some Democrats come along with us on it. I hope they will. But the reconciliation package is going to have most of those provisions there.”

A major question amid Republicans’ push to slash government spending is whether or not they will go after health care spending to make room for other priorities. 

This week, freshman Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., said in a Fox News interview that Republicans were considering cutting into mandatory spending—a category that includes Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security programs—to address the American debt spiral.

“We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here in a unified government to actually address mandatory spending,” said Moore in the interview.

Asked point-blank if he would consider cutting into Medicaid, Johnson said he was open to identifying wasteful expenditures but would not destroy the program.

“Medicaid has never been on the chopping block. … It’s nonbenefit-related reforms to the program [that we would look at to cut]. Right? Medicaid is infamous for fraud, waste, and abuse. By some estimates, large percentages of the dollars that are allocated there are wasted and stolen,” said Johnson. 

“We do right to go into those programs and find that and show the people what’s happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. And if you eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid, you’ve got a huge amount of money that you can spend on real priorities for the country,” Johnson said.

The speaker added that he and his colleagues would look into removing beneficiaries of the program who should not be entitled to receive benefits. The program was designed for economically disadvantaged citizens.

“You make sure that people who are able-bodied workers, you know, men under the age of 40, for example, who have rolled onto Medicaid and gotten onto the expansion and need to be working—if you add work requirements into Medicaid, it makes sense to people,” said Johnson.

“Everybody needs to take a deep sigh of relief and understand that we’re not going to harm any Americans with this. What we’re doing is the right thing by the people.”