Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett
On April 5, the Senate approved a modified budget framework, which is a betrayal of the House’s more responsible fiscal stance. The Senate’s strategy is clear. They want to jam House Republicans with a massive debt-financed tax package with zero substantive offsets. The Senate’s budget resolution replaces the House’s $2 trillion in concrete spending reductions with $4 billion in spending cut instructions, adds $221 billion in new spending, and sets a dangerous precedent by adopting a scoring baseline that hides at least $5 trillion in deficit-increasing tax cuts. House Republicans should call out the Senate’s strategy for what it is—a blatant attempt to abandon any semblance of fiscal sanity.
As Cato’s Adam Michel, Director of Tax Policy Studies, recently put it,
If the House accepts the Senate version, they will in all likelihood have already lost the fight for a responsible bill.
If they don’t come to consensus now on the spending cuts, a few Senators’ unwillingness to cut anything meaningful will stall the process until the need to raise the debt ceiling becomes the forcing mechanism to back fiscal hawks into a corner and get them to vote for a bad bill.
At least a dozen legislators in the House who fought hard to tie tax cuts to real spending restraint have rightly expressed skepticism over the Senate’s game plan.
Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R‑PA): “The leverage is right now. I just don’t believe that if we can’t set some kind of a floor for spending cuts now, we’re going to get them anytime later.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R‑TX): “The Senate is making very clear it has little intent to reduce spending.”
Rep. Keith Self (R‑TX): “House Republicans passed a strong budget with $1.5 trillion in cuts. The Senate budget offers only a measly $4 billion in cuts…nowhere near what we need to curb the deficit.”
Rep. Josh Brecheen (R‑OK): “So many of us are GREATLY disappointed in the Senate budget resolution (that initiates the reconciliation process) effectively gutting what we sent over from the House!”
Other skeptical House Republicans include Scott Perry (R‑PA), Andy Harris (R‑MD), Thomas Massie (R‑KY), Ralph Norman (R‑SC), David Schweikert (R‑AZ), Andy Ogles (R‑TN), Andrew Clyde (R‑GA), and Victoria Spartz (R‑IN).
House Budget Chair Rep. Arrington (R‑TX) perhaps put it best, saying in a recent interview:
Our children are going to inherit the whirlwind of our recklessness, now to the tune of $36 trillion in debt, $2 trillion annual deficits, $1 trillion just to service the debt. Those are all deferred taxes on our children. So we have to have offsets, we cannot increase the deficit, and we have to get our country on a sustainable and responsible path. That’s missing from the Senate bill. That was in the House bill.
Don’t Get Bullied by Leadership and Tumultuous Markets
Reportedly, President Trump and GOP leaders have been attempting to pressure House Republicans to swallow the Senate bill. This arm-twisting campaign is taking place as Wall Street has experienced a massive economic downturn—sparked by the president’s tariff-driven market panic. House legislators need to recognize that they hold the cards. House Republicans muscled the $2 trillion spending cut target through a razor-thin majority. They shouldn’t allow political and economic turmoil to steamroll fiscal accountability. Now is the time to hold the line.
Lawmakers have a choice. Accept the Senate’s resolution under pressure or insist on a better path—one that doubles down on the House’s stronger fiscal framework, goes big with spending cuts, and protects Americans from the hidden costs of debt and inflation. Let’s hope legislators buck the trend in Washington of consistently making the wrong fiscal choice.