House GOP looks to make progress on reconciliation this week

By Nico Portuondo, Meredith Lee Hill | 02/03/2025 06:45 AM EST

Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans are racing to pass a budget reconciliation plan by April, but new internal divisions threaten their ambitious agenda.

House Speaker Mike Johnson applauds President Donald Trump.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) applauds President Donald Trump during the House GOP retreat in Florida last week, where lawmakers were supposed to settle disagreements on budget reconciliation legislation. Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans may face their first major test this week as part of their ambitious effort to draft and pass a party-line budget reconciliation package.

The Louisiana Republican has instructed the House Budget Committee, led by Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), to take the first meaningful steps in advancing that effort by week’s end.

But they’re already encountering problems with hard-right conservatives, who don’t like the blueprint presented at last week’s House GOP retreat at Trump National Doral Miami, according to reporting by POLITICO.

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“When we return to the Hill, the Budget Committee will be marking up a resolution that serves as the foundation for the reconciliation process,” Johnson said last week. “That will keep us on the aggressive schedule that’s been set out to make sure we accomplish this mission.”

That “aggressive” schedule, Johnson said, will necessitate Republicans passing the budget resolution through the House floor by late February. Then, GOP lawmakers will work toward getting a full reconciliation package through both chambers of Congress and to the president’s desk by the end of April.

Much remains to be done for the GOP Congress to deliver on that lofty timeline. House lawmakers have not yet landed on a top-line spending number for the budget resolution, much less specific reconciliation policies like which clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act could be repealed and how Republicans can create spending offsets through increased oil and gas revenues.

“Stay tuned on the [top-line number], it will be substantial because it has to be,” Johnson told reporters last week. “Anything we do is going to be deficit neutral at least, and hopefully deficit reducing, because we think we’ve got to change that trajectory.”

Hard-liners and others are now pushing for at least $1 trillion in spending cuts, according to people familiar with the talks, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Johnson will have a very tight margin for error. After Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is likely confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations next week, House Republicans will only have a one-vote majority to work with until early April.

Unfortunately for Johnson, discontent persists. The House Freedom Caucus asked Republican members last week in a post on the social media sit X if they felt “rudderless when it comes to reconciliation,” in a bid to forward its separate reconciliation proposal that would deliver more radical funding cuts to federal aid programs.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was ousted from the Freedom Caucus in 2023, had her own lengthy post on X.

“We still do not have a plan on budget reconciliation and our Speaker and his team have not offered one,” she wrote.

Greene added that Republicans were “presented with the same policy and budget cut proposals that we have been presented with for a month now.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at the Trump National Doral Miami.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at the House Republican retreat in Florida. | Joe Raedle/AFP via Getty Images

If House Republicans fail to move quickly, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he was willing to “pull the trigger” on the Senate’s own initial budget blueprint that has already been drafted.

The Senate — which would rather do two bills on reconciliation, starting with energy and the border — may still follow the House’s one-bill plan if the House GOP can come to a consensus.

“I don’t know if you all know this, but Republicans have a very small margin now, and it’s going to be that way the entire way through,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). “If we stay unified and hash out our differences, we can get anything done.”

Energy, environment targets

House Republicans made some progress at the Miami-area GOP retreat, when House Republican committee chairs laid out rough spending cuts for their upcoming budget reconciliation bill to rank-and-file members.

Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) told lawmakers that he is targeting $200 billion in savings in his committee’s jurisdiction. He may have to go deeper to please rebels.

Much of those potential savings will likely come from cuts to federal health programs. Guthrie said committee staff was also figuring out how much clean energy spending can be rescinded in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and other climate legislation that was not obligated by the outgoing Biden administration.

“We know money has been spent up until probably noon on Inauguration Day,” Guthrie said. “The executive branch has to give the information on spending that we couldn’t get before under Biden.”

House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), on the other hand, is parsing out how his committee can encourage increased federal oil and gas leasing.

The GOP is eyeing oil and gas royalties from increased drilling as offsets for increased spending in other areas of the reconciliation effort, like defense and border security.

The House Budget Committee has not yet set a date for the potential markup hearing for the budget resolution. A spokesperson did not return a request for comment on whether the markup was still planned for this week.

And as uncertainty continues to swirl around reconciliation negotiations, Johnson has been pleading with his House caucus to get behind the initial budget proposal to at least get the ball rolling.

“The real battle is not in the budget resolution, it’s in the final package,” Johnson said. “Everybody here still has the right to stop this process at some point down the road, but we have to begin it and start this necessary step.”