A significant number of House Republicans are now sending a stern warning to their counterparts in the U.S. Senate to not fundamentally alter H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act").
Politico reported Tuesday that the group of 38 Republican members of the House of Representatives — led by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), who is vice chair of the House Budget Committee — sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) urging him and the Senate Republican Conference to stay away from "budget gimmicks" as they make changes to the megabill. In the letter, Smucker and his colleagues said "any additional tax cuts" should be accompanied "dollar for dollar by real, enforceable spending reductions" if the Senate hopes to have enough House GOP support to get the legislation to President Donald Trump's desk.
“We recognize the Senate will have its own say to make changes to the bill, and we welcome amendments that increase verifiable savings and make the overall package even more sustainable,” the letter read. “Additional spending reduction strengthens the bill and the nation alike. What cannot change is the architecture established by the House framework.”
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Smucker's letter was joined by several powerful House Republicans, including Reps. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who chairs the House Budget Committee, Andy Harris (R-Md.), who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus and Blake Moore (R-Utah), who is the vice chair of the House Republican Conference. This suggests that the signatories of the letter may hold enough sway over their fellow Republicans to sink the legislation should it fail to satisfy their desire for deep budget cuts across the entirety of the federal government.
"A reconciliation bill that relaxes fiscal discipline reflected in the House-passed bill would invite higher borrowing costs and undermine the economic growth that Americans need to maximize opportunity," they wrote.
In the House-passed version of the bill, Smucker successfully pushed for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts — the vast bulk of which comes from federal support for Medicaid (the program that provides health insurance for low-income and disabled Americans). However, the cuts are largely offset by a 10-year extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which were overwhelmingly skewed in favor of the richest Americans.
The bill's fate in the Senate remains uncertain, as even reliably conservative senators like Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have railed against the bill's ballooning of the federal deficit by trillions of dollars. Despite the Senate being under Republican control, the GOP can only afford three defections if it hopes to pass the bill back to the House, assuming unified Democratic opposition.
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Click here to read Politico's full report.