Mike Johnson Walks Tightrope Between Trump Plans and Contentious GOP

House Speaker Mike Johnson faces heightening pressure to deliver President Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress while attempting to satisfy a Republican conference with significant policy priority discord.

Why It Matters

Trump has been aggressively pushing through his conservative ideology via executive orders since being sworn in for his second term last week. But several of the president’s goals cannot be legally achieved without bills successfully passing through Congress and reaching his desk.

With Republicans holding a single-vote majority in the House, Johnson has a particularly difficult job of ensuring that no members of his party vote against legislation that he brings up for a vote.

What To Know

Republicans are expected to attempt to pass items on Trump’s agenda via the reconciliation process—attaching policy goals to a massive federal budget bill that would only require a simple majority vote in both the House and Senate.

But Republicans are split on which policies should be included in the bill and which should be set aside to face a potential filibuster by Senate Democrats.

Conservative Republicans are generally in favor of attempting to pass more of Trump’s plans via reconciliation, particularly extensive budget cuts, while centrists in swing districts may be less willing to allow cuts to programs that could affect their constituents and lose them votes in future elections.

Including Trump’s demand to raise the federal debt limit could also kill the bill in the Senate, where some fiscally conservative Republicans have suggested they will not support any bill that includes raising the debt limit regardless of the president’s demands.

CNN reported on Tuesday that Johnson is hoping to cut $2.5 trillion in government spending that would affect Medicaid but leave other programs like Social Security and Medicare intact.

Some Republicans from states like New York and California are reportedly concerned that the cuts will also target their districts and are demanding improved tax breaks for their constituents before voting on a budget package.

“Before I vote for the topline number, I’d like to have a general understanding of where some of these decisions are going to be made and where the cuts are going to come from,” Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, who represents part of New York City, told CNN.

“We understand how some of our colleagues may feel, but I feel maybe just as bad about voting for a refundable tax credit that might benefit their state,” she added, referring to the desire of some Republicans to cut funding to New York. “So it’s got to be a give and take. It’s got to be a negotiation.”

What People Are Saying

Republican Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee, on how Johnson and his team can craft a successful reconciliation bill, in comments to CNN: “They’re going to have to come to us—the ones that are fiscally conservative and that have kept our word and asked us what we can live with … They have not.”

GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to CNN: “We don’t have a plan to unify behind … Leadership should be bringing a plan forward that we can all start getting on board with.”

Johnson, suggesting that Trump’s demand for a debt limit hike will not be part of the budget bill, in comments to The Hill on Tuesday: “I think there’s some concern in the Senate that that might be difficult to do on a partisan basis, and so it may wind up being a bipartisan exercise … So where that fits in and in what sequence is part of the discussion here, and we’ll make that determination here in the coming week or so.”

Newsweek reached out for comment to the offices of Greene, Burchett, Malliotakis and Johnson via email on Tuesday night.

What Happens Next

The House Budget Committee is set to meet next week, when it will reportedly vote on a still undisclosed “blueprint” for the budget. The Senate and House would both have to approve a nonbinding version of any reconciliation bill before details are ironed out and a binding version of the bill is voted on by both chambers.