House Republicans are heading to President Donald Trump’s Miami-area resort for their annual policy retreat. They’re not going there for the weather.
Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP members have major decisions to make over the coming days that will determine whether Trump and Republicans can deliver on their sweeping legislative agenda before the 2026 midterms. They’re already running behind.
The biggest task for the gathering at Trump National Doral: Finalize a budget blueprint plan for the massive, party-line bill they’re planning, touching energy, border security and tax policy.
But to do that, Republicans need to decide what will go in that package — with the price tag of Trump’s priorities reaching $10 trillion over 10 years — versus what might be included in a separate, bipartisan government funding bill that will be negotiated with Democrats over the next seven weeks. The fate of a necessary debt ceiling increase is top of mind.
Johnson has been carefully collecting member feedback for weeks while privately debating a host of options with GOP leaders. But House Republicans are growing impatient and want to know the game plan.
“We need to have a sense of urgency with the debt ceiling coming,” said Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus. “I hope there’s options at this point.”
The House Budget Committee is set to meet and take up the fiscal blueprint for the GOP agenda when lawmakers return to Washington next week. Adopting an identical blueprint in the House and Senate is a prerequisite for unlocking the budget reconciliation process that allows Republicans to sidestep a filibuster by Democrats.
Johnson last week indicated he’s planning to present more detailed plans to GOP members and discuss the reconciliation package, government funding for fiscal 2025, a debt-limit hike, California wildfire aid, border security money “and more” — including a potential bipartisan deal with Democrats that could encompass multiple parts of that puzzle.
“We’re looking at all options,” Johnson said of a larger funding deal with Democrats, adding that no decisions have been made.
But many Republicans are skeptical they’ll leave the retreat with concrete plans in hand. Some GOP members initially planned to skip the gathering, opting instead for an official trip to Africa, but those plans ended up getting canceled, according to two people granted anonymity to talk about planning for the closed-door event.
The planned retreat discussions have been tailored to show attending members the possibilities for the way forward and to take their temperatures on potential spending cuts, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the planning. Leaders will have to carefully balance sometimes competing interests from various GOP factions.
Committee chairs will present their proposals for the reconciliation package and answer member questions during a series of breakout sessions Tuesday.
The reconciliation process will be the subject of a plenary session hosted by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and chairs on Wednesday morning. They’re set to then pile into buses and head back to the airport just before noon Wednesday.
“In my world, there’s some, ‘All right, this can be part of reconciliation, this can’t be part.’ And then once you get what the doable is, then you start figuring out what the legislative language is,” said Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.).
Republicans can expect to get a message of urgency Monday night, when Trump himself will address them at his resort.
“That will certainly be a highlight for us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), head of the party campaign committee, adding that Trump’s “fun to be around” and that retreats generally allow Republicans to “get together away from all the chaos” in Washington.
But he acknowledged it’s not just another GOP gathering.
“This one is particularly important because we have to hammer out what our plan is on reconciliation,” Hudson said. “So I’m hopeful we can get to a point where we can all agree and get ready to get back here and go to work.”
Beyond being a team-building exercise, party retreats can also serve as an early-warning system for potential threats to the agenda.
Eight years ago, Republicans gathered in Philadelphia to plot out their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a more conservative alternative. In one contentious closed-door session — one that was secretly recorded and leaked to media outlets — members expressed serious trepidations about how leaders were planning to go about it.
Seven months later, the push for the health care overhaul imploded when the party could not unite around a plan. Leaders ended up having to abandon it and move on to a package of tax cuts — one they now have to renew.
This year, there aren’t the same sort of fundamental objections to core agenda items. But there are serious disagreements that members have to work through — most of them over how to pay for the massive bill.
For example, Republicans on the Armed Services Committee are deeply opposed to Guthrie’s proposal to restore the spectrum auction authority of the Federal Communications Commission as they try to balance the promise of advanced wireless technology and the needs of the military. Guthrie said he planned to use the retreat to work through the impasse. And there are some members — especially on Johnson’s right flank — who are expecting trillions of dollars in spending cuts. They’re also wary that his plan for one huge bill comes at the cost of delays and the risk the entire package could blow up.
“I was kind of in favor, honestly, of doing two separate bills. I think that would have been the way to play this,” Moore said, adding he just wants a “good game plan” out of the retreat.
Centrists are also relaying their concerns to GOP leaders about some committees’ plans to target pieces of the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that provides food aid benefits for more than 40 million low-income Americans.
Republicans are discussing enacting Medicaid work requirements for the first time and adding additional SNAP work requirements for parents with children over 7 years old.
Those proposals are relatively more palatable for GOP lawmakers in competitive districts than the massive cuts to current benefits some conservatives would prefer. But they’re still politically divisive and could provide Democrats major campaign fodder in blue and purple districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.
