House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The House is taking the last step today to fund President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda for the rest of his second term, clearing the decks for Republicans to focus on passing another party-line bill before the midterms.
Defense funding and a fraud crackdown are House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington’s top priorities, he told Rachel Schilke last night. Healthcare and housing affordability could also be in the mix.
“We’re live, we’re in multiple meetings talking about finalizing a product,” Arrington said, although he said he doesn’t have a timeline for advancing a budget resolution.
While Republicans may be gung-ho, the White House seems to be paying less attention, and Trump’s support will be critical for keeping the party in line if they want to get the bill done quickly.
Trump is still signaling an interest in reviving the now-defunct DOJ “weaponization” fund. He lashed out at the Senate parliamentarian, who struck funding from the latest reconciliation bill to secure the White House ballroom. And he’s still focused on the SAVE America voter ID bill.
Arrington didn’t rule out those priorities. “Everything’s on the table, but if it doesn’t unify us, we’re not going to move forward with it,” he said.
But each of those policies would likely be dead on arrival in the Senate.
“The president’s remaining legislative priorities either can’t be advanced via reconciliation, like the SAVE America Act, or have proven fatally controversial in the Senate, like the ballroom,” said Mike Fragoso, a partner at Torridon Law who used to work for former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “This will limit his interest in such a process which will make it even harder for Congress to execute.”
The only other thing Trump has publicly sought from another reconciliation bill is defense money: he used his budget request for the next fiscal year to push for another $350 billion in new mandatory defense spending as part of his pursuit of a $1.5 trillion Pentagon topline. But that’s largely been the extent of his and his administration’s public push to get another reconciliation bill across the finish line this year.
A White House spokesperson referred questions to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not return a request for comment.
Even as key House Republicans have pressed leadership to pass another partisan spending bill before the midterms, Trump told our Mica Soellner in December that he thought it was unnecessary.
Trump has never shared House Republicans’ appetite for the kind of debt reduction that’s driving the next fiscal package. He has paid lip service to tackling fraud but given his vice president and other members of his Cabinet the ignominious task of actually trying to find enough to make a dent in the deficit.
His patience with the entire legislative branch, especially the powerful budget reconciliation process that got his signature legislative accomplishment across the finish line, appears to be wearing thin.
The midterms are less than five months away and attention spans on the Hill are going to run short very soon. Only Trump can keep his party focused on another reconciliation bill, but that focus may be lacking at the White House, too.
Read more: GOP Group Convenes Budget Experts on Third Reconciliation Bill
