Dem
47
GOP
53
That was a 3,600-word rundown of the past 100 days. Now on to the future, specifically the Great Big Wonderful bill Trump wants. How is it doing? In three words: not so well. Donald Trump wanted it passed in his first 100 days. Well, the 100-day mark has come and gone and the bill hasn't even been written yet, let alone voted on or passed by either chamber of Congress. Last month, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) set Memorial Day as the new target. Not a chance. Now Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is hoping for Independence Day. Pretty soon it will be Christmas... 2026.
And Bessent isn't even talking about the whole bill, just the tax part and debt part. There is actually a deadline there. When the federal debt limit is reached, if the debt limit hasn't been raised, the treasury cannot issue any more bonds and might not be able to redeem existing ones, leading to a default. That would probably result in financial markets worldwide collapsing, resulting in a global depression. The exact date the debt limit is hit is not clear yet because there are tricks Bessent can use to delay the day of reckoning a little bit, but it is within a few months.
The House is taking the lead on the bill, with individual committees meeting to slash the budget in their areas of jurisdiction. The problem is that every single item in the budget is there because some member of Congress wanted it there. Sometimes multiple members. Even if the original sponsors are no longer in Congress, the interest groups that urged the member to include it are generally still around and so are their lobbyists. Cutting items isn't easy when there is virtually nothing in the budget that all 220 Republicans in the House hate. But the budget resolution requires big cuts in multiple areas. Herding all the cats won't be easy.
Even committees tasking with drafting relatively minor and uncontroversial parts of the budget are scrambling. This is what is making the deadline slip and slip again. The July 4 deadline is more wishful thinking than anything else. And since both chambers take off for a week around the holiday, if they miss by a day, they miss by a week. And in the worst case, the House is scheduled to recess on July 25 and not come back until Sept. 2. Given the earful members are getting at town halls lately, maybe they will decide it is safer to forget the recess and just stay in D.C. all summer.
And another little problem is that even if the House passes a bill, the Senate has to pass it as well. The House wants to cut $1.5 trillion in costs. The Senate wants to use magic accounting and basically not cut anything. Getting that worked out won't be easy.
Everyone is expecting the biggest fight to be over Medicaid, which impacts 70 million people, many of whom are voters. The budget resolution has instructed the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut almost a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. People are going to notice the consequences of that and not like it so much. A dozen House Republicans recently wrote a letter to the chairman of that committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), saying they will not vote for a bill that cuts Medicaid. Without their votes, there is no bill. All of them come from swing districts and probably mean it. The tension between the Republicans who will not vote for a bill with $1 trillion or more in cuts and the Republicans who voted for the budget resolution on the understanding that the knives are out will only get greater.
One unknown is how much lobbying Donald Trump will do. He hates getting into the weeds on anything, except maybe on his golf courses. If he lobbies individual House members, maybe he can convince them. But if they are convinced that voting for massive Medicaid cuts is a political death sentence, they may be faced with a choice of losing their job in a primary or losing their job in a general election. If they are convinced it is over, they could do what they think is best for their constituents and vote no. (V)