House Republican leaders want a floor vote next week on the Senate’s budget resolution, the first step in writing an immigration enforcement bill and passing it by President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline.
“It has to be clean because it has to be quick,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Thursday, indicating that conservatives could not make major changes to the other chamber’s blueprint at this time.
But Johnson and others still have to lock in support from conservatives who are threatening to vote against it if it doesn’t encompass more top GOP policy priorities, and it is proving to be a delicate balancing act.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) met Thursday morning with Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) and leaders of key House GOP factions, according to four people granted anonymity to share details of private meetings — an effort to quell concerns among some conservatives about the narrow scope of the current plan. Arrington and other senior Republicans have been pushing to expand the party-line bill currently under discussion.
