By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson often says he sees himself as the quarterback and President-elect Donald Trump as the coach calling plays on their legislative priorities as Republicans take power in Washington.
But with Trump set to meet with GOP senators Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Republicans are quickly finding themselves in a dilemma: What happens when the coach changes his mind?
Trump has given mixed signals, flip-flopping over what is the best strategy for moving ahead with the party’s legislative agenda. At stake are tax cuts, border security, money to deport immigrants and efforts to boost oil and gas energy production — priorities for Republicans coming to the White House, House and Senate.
One bill or two, with little time to waste on achieving Trump’s priorities
House Republicans want a single package. Senate leaders are proposing at least two.
Trump, over the weekend, said he wanted “one big, beautiful bill.” By Monday, he had reopened the door to two.
“Well, I like one big beautiful bill, and I always have, I always will,” Trump said when asked about it at a news conference Tuesday. “But if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker, because you can do the immigration stuff early.”
With Trump taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, Republicans are straining to sort out their differences. They have been meeting privately with Trump — and again Wednesday — to settle on a game plan in hopes of achieving accomplishments in the first 100 days of his administration.
They have no time to waste. Political capital is almost always at its peak at the start of a new presidential term, even more so because this is Trump’s second and he is prevented under the Constitution from a third.
“You all heard me say over the last year we were developing — using my football metaphors — we were developing a playbook,” Johnson, R-La. said Tuesday.
“We have very well-designed plays. Now we are working out the sequence of those plays, working with a new head coach, in that metaphor, President Trump,” he said. “We are excited about how all of that is rolling out.”
Budget reconciliation carries high risk, but potentially high reward
Republicans are relying on perhaps the most complicated legislative tool at their disposal, the budget reconciliation process, as the vehicle to advance Trump’s priorities.
It’s a strategy with high risk, but also potentially high reward.
Reconciliation allows Congress to pass bills on a majority basis, without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate that could delay or kill action. But it is also a difficult, strict and time-consuming process that can fall apart at any moment.
Democrats used the same tool during the Obama era to approve the Affordable Care Act in 2010 without any Republican support. Republicans used it during Trump’s first term to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act without Democrats.
Using reconciliation is a herculean task. Doing it twice could prove doubly difficult.
Democrats are trying to stand their ground
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California said it doesn’t matter whether Republicans use one bill or two to achieve their goals.
What’s at stake, Aguilar said, is that Trump and the Republicans are proposing a tax giveaway to the wealthy and budget cuts that will cut social services and other programs that Americans rely on.
Republicans are “huddling behind closed doors … trying to cut a deal,” Aguilar said, and are focused on “how they provide tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and how they cut programs that hurt people.”
Republicans want to all get on the same page
Trump, who has been holding meetings at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, scheduled the session with Republican senators while he was in Washington for funeral services for former President Jimmy Carter.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the second-ranking Republican, said the meeting will help determine “how we all get on the same page with the House.”
Many GOP senators preferred the strategy proposed by Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., that would break the Trump priorities into two bills.
Thune said one could be approved within the first 30 days of the new administration. It would include provisions for border security and mass deportations, energy development and military funds. The tax cuts would come later, in a second package.
“We just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with the focus on that,” Barrasso said.
Because the GOP tax cuts don’t expire until Dec. 31, he said the two-pronged approach will give lawmakers more time to work on that.
“The urgency of the tax issue doesn’t really come into play until the end of the year,” Barrasso said, compared with the priorities of the U.S.-Mexico border and energy production.
Reconciliation was once a routine process to tidy up year-end spending and settle any differences in federal accounts. More recently, it has become the partisan tool of choice when the majority party in Congress tries to pass legislation over the objection of the minority.
The strategy is all the more attractive for Republicans in the face of stiff Democratic resistance to their wish list. But it is especially difficult for Republicans to go it alone because the GOP majorities are slim, particularly in the House, where Johnson will need almost all Republicans on board.
Trump plans meetings this weekend at Mar-a-Lago with House Republicans
Trump is expected to meet with House Republicans at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.
Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., among those headed to Florida, said he supports the House’s one-bill approach.
Hern said he agrees with what those who suggest with one big bill, “You’re not going to get everything that you want.”
“So how do we put something together that everybody can get something?” Hern said.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a member of GOP leadership who invited the president-elect to meet with senators, said, “I think he needs to hear what our impressions are in terms of how we’re going to get where we all want to go.”
She said she could go with one or two bills.
“But I still think the two-bill strategy is better simply because I think we can get a victory in early, which will show the American people and the president we mean business,” she said.
During his first term, Trump was known for changing his mind, a habit that members of Congress became accustomed to as they navigated his presidency.
Trump ally Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said Trump just “wants all of it done.”
“He supports the one bill, but he also wants both,” he said. “Either one. If it takes two, it takes two.”
Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
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