House Republicans are hoping to start work on the budget targets for critical committees on Saturday — the first step in kicking off their ambitious legislative agenda involving energy, border and tax policy.
“The Ways and Means Committee is just going to be able to draft tax legislation according to what the budget reconciliation instructions are,” said House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who will be leading the charge on extensions of President-elect Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
“And so when the conference figures out what they want in those instructions, we’ll be able to deliver according to those parameters,” said Smith, when asked about the primary goal of a GOP conference meeting tentatively scheduled for Saturday at Fort McNair, an Army post in Southwest Washington.
Determining the cost and savings directives for the House committees is necessary to jump-start the so-called budget reconciliation, which will allow Republicans to pass their policy priorities without Democratic support in the Senate.
Specifically, if the conference can come to an agreement on the overarching framework, Republican leadership can put together a budget resolution that tells each committee the budgetary changes they must make over specified time periods.
According to Ways and Means member Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), there will be presentations by chairs of the committees at the GOP retreat, including not only Ways and Means but also Energy and Commerce and Homeland Security.
Republicans will be “going over a little bit of the playbook” for reconciliation, Malliotakis said. “They mentioned they could do toplines.”
Malliotakis also indicated that the GOP still had not come to a decision on whether to do reconciliation in two bills or put all of the GOP’s policy priorities together in one package.
Disagreements over the process have publicly pitted Smith against Trump adviser Stephen Miller and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, with the latter two favoring a two-bill process with taxes coming second.
“Jason will focus on the need to do the tax package within the first reconciliation, not to delay it,” Malliotakis said.
Other topics that would be discussed as part of the reconciliation package include a broad agreement, ironed out by GOP leadership during the December debate over government spending, to slash spending by $2.5 trillion and increase the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion — which came at the behest of Trump’s demands.
Any increase to the debt ceiling would be handled by the Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees.
“With all that we’re doing to restore fiscal health and sincerity, we ought to put the debt ceiling in there as well,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said Friday of the reconciliation bill.
New York and New Jersey Republicans also plan on insisting Saturday that any tax bill include an increase to the $10,000 state and local tax deduction. Their demands for the tax relief, otherwise unpopular in the GOP conference, prevented tax legislation from moving forward several times in the 118th Congress.
Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said he plans “to ensure, like President Trump insists, that [SALT] remains a priority in our tax policy.”
