House Freedom Caucus Presses for Budget Agreement With Trump, Johnson

Don’t count on the budget reconciliation bill passing the House today. That appeared to be the message from leading House Freedom Caucus members, who said they were working on a deal with the White House and House GOP leadership.

“We are greatly encouraged by the progress that’s been made in the last 24 hours,” said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md. 

The entire Republican conference met with President Donald Trump at the Capitol on Tuesday, where he encouraged them to wrap up negotiations on his “big, beautiful bill,” which would fulfill campaign promises such as extending his first-term 2017 tax cuts and funding border security.

“So, in the last 24 hours, well, there was a little SALT deal made,” said Harris. 

That was a reference to a reported $40,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions—a quadrupling from $10,000—offered by House Speaker Mike Johnson to blue state Republicans. Fiscal hawks view a higher SALT cap as a revenue killer that bails out high-tax states.

“But the White House offered a proposal, late last night, that I think fulfills the other two parts of what the president talked about,” Harris said.

Those other two parts are eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid and ending Biden-era energy subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act.

The caucus members were set to meet with the White House at 3 p.m.

“There’s broad agreement within the House Freedom Caucus that if that’s included in the package, I think this package is en route to get passed. I don’t think it can get done today,” said Harris.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, among the hardest of hard-liners in the caucus, echoed the sentiment of wanting the bill to get passed, but demanding changes.

“We’re going to work with the president today. We’re going to work with our colleagues to deliver, but there’s a long way to go. I want to be very clear—we’ve got to deliver on what we’re talking about, or we’re not going to be able to get the bill done.”

Then Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., stepped in.

“We accepted the White House’s offer last night. Unfortunately, it’s not yet codified in this agreement. We need to continue to work at that,” he said.

“This is a completely arbitrary deadline, set by people here to force people into a corner to make bad decisions,” he said of leadership’s attempts to hold a vote Wednesday. 

“It’s more important to get this right, to get it correct, than to get it fast.”

The congressmen would not go into much detail about their agreement with the White House.

“Broadly, the president came and said we need to end waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid,” said Harris. “The other component is in the [addressing] of rising energy costs … . This ‘Green New Scam’ isn’t working.”

One thing left mostly unaddressed in the press conference was the issue of SALT—whether or not the fiscal hawks would accept a $40,000 cap.

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal that Trump had delegated the negotiation to Speaker Johnson.

“The president was pretty clear about the negotiations base yesterday. And one of the big issues is the speaker should have spent the day negotiating on SALT instead of negotiating on the waste, fraud, and abuse that’s in Medicaid. One is outside of the president’s parameters, and the waste, fraud, and abuse is something he said he wanted to address, and so we’re working to address it.”

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