Trump prefers House budget bill over Senate

The last few weeks have been an up-and-down battle for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

With there now being a congressional battle over how best to present the budget legislation, Trump is siding with the House to give him "one big beautiful bill."

Senate Threatens to Take Over

Mike Johnson was elected as Speaker because Trump stepped in to endorse him. If anyone is being honest, they realize this was done because Trump knows he can push Johnson around like a chess piece on the board.

To that point, Trump made Johnson aware that he wanted one massive spending bill that would enable him to use reconciliation to ram policies through Congress, just like Biden and Democrats did during the last administration.

Johnson, however, has been slow on the draw, which resulted in Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) trying to take charge of the situation, stating, “It’s time for the Senate to move. Hopefully, we’ll get started next week, marking it up in committee.”

Graham made that statement in early February, and it seemed that the power brokers in the Senate backed having a much smaller piece of legislation, saying what Trump wanted was too complicated.

Trump Settles Issue... or Did He?

On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump tried to settle the issue, announcing that he was backing the House plan over the Senate plan.

Trump posted to Truth Social, “The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it.

“We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to 'kickstart' the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, 'ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.' It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

This was a big win for Speaker Johnson, but that is only if he can get the entire caucus on the same page. Since Trump raided the House for administration appointments, the GOP now only has one vote to spare in the House.

Oops, He Did It Again

Johnson has failed on this front before, and it appears that he is falling again, as at least three Republicans are not yet on board with the House budget. Reps. David Valadao (R-CA), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and Don Bacon (R-NE) have not yet stated they will support the bill, and that is a huge problem for Trump.

Malliotakis stated, “I’m leaning no on the resolution as-is, minus getting clarity on my concerns. I’m glad to hear that he agrees with me that we need to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but it doesn’t eliminate my concerns with the specific resolution put forward by the House or my need for clarity before next week’s vote."

Valadao said there are about 10 Republicans concerned at this point, but they have yet to speak up on it. He did, stating, “Until I know exactly what’s going to be in, or what this is going to look like, or at least have some pretty good idea, I’m really concerned with this. But it sounds like the president and myself and others are on the same page: We don’t want to touch Medicaid. We want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. If he’s on the same page as me, that makes me feel a little bit better about it.”

Trump has stated he is not ending those programs, but he does want them reformed, likely putting work restrictions on able-bodied Americans who are just collecting checks right now. I completely support that idea, but can we get the entire caucus to support the idea? The clock is ticking, so Johnson better get this figured out, or the House will once again be tossed into chaos.