America's Talking - House Republicans’ $4.5 Trillion Budget Resolution Overcomes Odds, Passes

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, border, defense, and energy promises are one step closer to enactment after the U.S. House narrowly passed its $4.5 trillion budget resolution Tuesday night, officially kickstarting the budget reconciliation process. Following hours of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., convincing Republican holdouts to commit, a brief cancellation of the vote, and then an abrupt recalling of all House members, the resolution passed 217-215 and now heads to the Senate. Republicans have a majority in the upper chamber with 53 members to the Democrats' 45 and two independents caucusing with them.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_e934e594-f3eb-11ef-b32d-13db8e438b27.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAlep, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Republicans in the U.S. House this week passed a $4.5 trillion budget resolution that includes an extension of President Donald Trump's tax cuts and additional dollars for border security and national defense. The measure now heads to the Senate where Republicans also hold a slim majority. joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, the vote in the House was close with Democrats opposing the budget resolution.

While there are cuts in spending, the resolution would still add to the nation's debt. Tell us more. Sure, Dan. I mean, this was a hard-fought battle for Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, who was able to, against, you know, all odds in some sense, cobble together these votes to pass massive tax cuts, a very expensive, bill, $4.5 trillion, which is kind of interesting, given, you know, the president's focus on cutting spending right now. And they've, the Republicans have taken, you know, some flack for that already, a criticism that they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth. But, you know, the interesting development that came almost, you know, soon after the House passed their bill, Dan, is the Senate has made very clear that they're not impressed with the House bill. So, and that was kind of a surprise.

I mean, there were some questions about how the Senate would receive the House bill, which, you know, it is, you know, costs a lot of money mostly because of, it extends Trump's tax cuts and has, you know, other tax things going on. But the Senate is basically saying there's going to be major changes. So the Senate had previously, because the House was delaying in their mind, the Senate had passed a bill that was just like a very small bill. that just kind of funded the border, you know, funded some basic things, cost a few hundred billion dollars and did not address the tax issue yet. And so then the House passed this bill. And some people are reporting, oh, well, it's either the Senate bill or the House bill, but that's really old news at this point. Now it is, how is the Senate going to react to this new House gigantic bill?

And a few things we're hearing from senators, though it varies. One, they, a lot of senators, including Senator Thune, who's now really leading Republicans in the Senate, they want to make the Trump tax cuts permanent. And that's a really big deal. They don't want to just extend them. They want to make them permanent. And so that's going to be expensive.

It might take away from other tax cuts that people wanted to make to focus just on the Trump tax cuts, which were first passed in the 2017 tax cuts and jobs. So they want to make those permanent. And then there's some, you know, there's concern about, you know, paying for everything. And so can they do more? They want to do a lot of some centers want to do more cuts. to spending to help pay for these tax cuts. But at the same time, there's a lot of senators who are very worried about cuts to Medicaid, which is going to be one of the main ways to pay for this. And so, you know, my read on this, Dan, is this is going to be a gnarly battle. Republicans have,

you know, about two weeks until the government shuts down. And right now, it seems like it's going to be a lot of long nights for the legislative staffers on Capitol Hill. Casey, the national debt is at more than $36.5 trillion. Those who closely follow government spending in the national debt and the annual budget deficits have been warning for years that U.S. debt is unsustainable. Of course, President Donald Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency to help tax cuts. But because the budget deficits under Joe Biden grew to more than two, trillion dollars. There is a lot of work to do here. And this Republican House resolution would only add to the debt, only add to the budget deficits, although it does include some cuts, a number of cuts.

When your debt gets that big, I mean, this is hard, right? There are no easy solutions without massive budget cuts. So Republicans, which have slim majorities in both the House and the Senate, have a lot of work to do to get there. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think because we've been in deficits for so long, we don't have a realistic picture of what the U.S. can actually afford without being in deficit. We're so used to deficit spending that we have this sense of like how much it costs around the country.

And maybe if we trim a little here, trim a little there. But, you know, we've been in trillion dollar deficits for a while. And then ever since COVID, we've been in multi-trillion. know, over somewhere between one and two trillion, sometimes over two trillion over the last five years. And so when you talk about, you know, oh, well, we can cut, you know, $100 million of waste from Medicaid or something, it's really, I mean, of course, we want to do that, but it's a drop in the bucket to the bigger picture. And really, you know, the U.S. can only afford to pay for basically our entitlement programs and national defense. And that's about it. And so

all this other discretionary spending, all these other programs, these agencies that we pay for that are, it's all deficit spending. I mean, a huge percentage of our spending is deficit spending. And that's creating the other problem, which we've talked about on this podcast, which is, you know, interest on the national debt is on track to be our biggest expense in the country, more than defense, more than Medicaid, more than Medicare, more than we spend on anything. I mean, that's how you know, if just you think of a household. I mean, if you're paying more interest on your credit cards than you are paying for your mortgage, that's the definition of bankrupt. And the quantity here, too, you mentioned the tax cut and jobs act of 2017 under the first Biden or excuse me, the first Trump administration.

That has a sunset. And that sunset is many parts of that as a sunset. And that is this year. So either it's the dilemma is that either taxpayers, across the United States are going to see pretty significant tax hikes if it's not extended, or if it is extended, that's going to add to the budget deficit unless they can find enough spending cuts to pay for the tax cuts. Casey, we're almost out of time. Final word. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And just to put some fine points on this, you know, the minimum deduction is going

to go down if these expire, for instance. And another big one is, I believe the child tax credit is going to be cut, I think, in half. I mean, it's going to be a big cut to the child tax credit. So these are, these are not just tax cuts, you know, for businesses or, you know, billionaires, as some Democrats have said. This is going to impact everyone. This is going to impact, you know, the taxes that are that are, you know, your average American is filing. So it's a tough decision, you know, these are not, you know, all of capital gains reforms or something. These are things that are going to impact every American. But of course, the deficit. It is a huge problem. It's gone unaddressed. And it's more and more looking like this year it's not going to get addressed either, Dan. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story

and more at thecentersquare.com.