GOP rebels demanding significant cuts in budget bill

Ever since Congress came back in session, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been touting “one big, beautiful bill” for Donald Trump to sign.

Day by day, that dream is faltering, and even if he does have one bill, it better have significant cuts because a group of GOP House members are demanding a significant reduction in government spending. 

One Big, Beautiful Bill

After Trump took office, he made it clear to Johnson that he wanted one major budget bill that they could ram through Congress via reconciliation.

Johnson was adamant that the House could get this done, stating, “The Senate will not take the lead. We’re gonna take the lead.”

The House taking the lead was imperative because the Senate has a different idea of what this bill should look like, and rest assured, they do not want the type of bill that Johnson and Trump are considering.

This has resulted in several members of the House Freedom Caucus working back channels to discuss the budget legislation with Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Graham Says Senate Taking the Lead

Graham knows that his bill will get support in the House if he can craft it properly, so he is no longer waiting on Johnson, who is horribly behind schedule on this.

Graham put Johnson on notice, stating, “It’s time for the Senate to move. Hopefully we’ll get started next week marking it up in committee.”

If Graham can get a bill to the House before Johnson can get his bill passed, it will be yet another blackmark on his speakership. But again, even in the House bill does somehow get done, don’t count on the bill making it through the Senate as is.

To that point, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) stated, “I understand the desire for one big, beautiful bill, but it just wasn’t going to happen. It’s too complex.”

Falling Apart

Word on the street now is that talks in the House are getting extremely testy, as there was reportedly a closed-door session that got heated when the rebel faction of the House declared it wanted significant cuts to the budget.

Trump wants to break open the piggybank, but we have members of the House that want to hold Trump to his word about cutting the budget deficit and to start chipping away at the national debt.

One House Republican stated, "I think there’s a lot of frustration right now. They’ve been trying to be inclusive, but not every open forum they’ve offered is giving members the ability to say, ‘I feel like people are listening to me,’ because I don’t know that’s the case right now."

You guys know I have never really been a fan of Johnson, and he is once again proving that he may not be the man for the job. Trump wanted him in there because Trump knows he can push him like a chess piece around the board, but that is simply not working for this group of Republicans who are sick and tired of excessive spending from both sides of the aisle. We are about to have a showdown, so we will see who has the bigger backbone over the next few weeks while this all plays out.