A Budget Battle That Could Determine Speaker Johnson’s Future

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is staking his political future on one daunting task—delivering a budget reconciliation bill that will satisfy both houses of Congress.

In order to pass “one big, beautiful bill” to fulfill President Donald Trump's campaign promises, Johnson, R-La., will have to make good on his own commitments to the most fiscally conservative members of the House of Representatives.

Last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the Senate’s budget plan by the narrowest of margins, 216-214. 

The passage of the shared budget resolution—a necessary first step in the larger budgetary process—was achieved amid some skepticism from hard-line fiscal conservatives in the House over whether the Senate plan could sufficiently cut the deficit.

Democrats voted against it unanimously, while Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana were the only Republicans in opposition.

After the razor-thin vote, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a major figurehead within the House’s fiscally conservative faction, said that he had signed on reluctantly after receiving guarantees from Johnson that the final bill would include major spending cuts.

“Today, I reluctantly voted for the Senate amendment … on the basis of three specific commitments that form the floor for my consideration of the final reconciliation package,” Roy said Thursday.

The Texas lawmaker said these three commitments were: Trump promising “a minimum of $1 trillion in real reductions in mandatory spending,” as well as reforms to environmental regulations and Medicaid; Johnson promising to tie “tax cuts to spending cuts”; and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promising $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.

Politico reported that, in order to secure hard-liners' votes for the budget plan, Johnson told them the day before the vote that they could remove him as speaker if he does not fulfill his promises.

That means Republican House leadership will aggressively advocate its own budget framework and try to persuade GOP senators not to amend the bill in ways that would be unpalatable to Freedom Caucus conservatives in the House.

Johnson told reporters minutes after the passage of the budget plan that his team was ready to go with a budget reconciliation framework drafted months beforehand.

“We've been working on this for many months, almost a year now, really, when we first started the effort. And so, we have the work product already prepared. We have the bills drafted,” he said.

Some Republicans in the House are continuing to signal that they won’t sign on to any bill from the Senate that does not substantially reduce deficits.

“If, for some reason, the Senate were to change it in a substantial way—for example, if it were to come back and it wasn’t at least deficit neutral, but it actually increased the deficit—I think that would be a huge problem,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, who chairs the House Budget Committee. 

Johnson has reason, however, to be optimistic about his prospects.

The speaker has already cleared multiple hurdles in the 119th Congress; namely, a contentious speaker election in January, as well as two budget resolution votes in the new administration.