The Journal. - Trump 2.0: A Big, Beautiful Bill

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives narrowly passed a budget resolution this week that serves as a first draft of the “big, beautiful bill” President Trump has been seeking. WSJ’s Siobhan Hughes joins Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball to discuss how Congress is working with Trump. Plus, we take a look at what impact recent rulings from the judicial branch might mean for Trump's agenda.  Further Reading: - The Weight of Trump’s Agenda Sits on Mike Johnson’s Shoulders  Further Listening: - Why Trump Wants Ukrainian Minerals  - Trump 2.0: Shaking Up Europe  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Molly. Hey, Ryan. Did you know that there are three branches of government? What? Big surprise. Right now in Washington, it feels like there is just one and it is named Donald Trump. Or potentially Elon Musk. Yeah.

But while Trump is putting on a big show and it seems like he's doing all these things, for any of it to actually have the force of law, it has to go through Congress. — And this was a big week in Congress. — It was really a big week for Congress because they actually, finally passed something. — And Congress isn't the only branch of government that's been busy. So has the judicial branch. There's also been some court rulings both for and against Trump's agenda. Indeed.

From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudson. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, February 28th. [♪ music playing, applause and cheering from audience. Coming up, what the other two branches of government are up to. And we had our first cabinet meeting, which was dominated by someone who is not actually in the cabinet. Stay with us.

Stay with us. TD ready for you. All right, so Molly, let's talk about Congress first. Presidents have always had to work closely with Congress. Some have done it more effectively than others. But tell us about the Congress that Trump is working with. Well, it's a Republican Congress, for one thing. Republicans, as you may remember, when they won the election in November, also won slim majorities in the House and Senate. And they see themselves as very much Trump's team.

And this is different from when Trump was first in office eight years ago. During Trump's first term, he also had a Republican Congress, including the House and Senate. And in fact, there were bigger Republican majorities, but they were not as Trumpy. This time, Trump and Congress alike basically feel like they are there because of him. They got there on his electoral coattails. So they really feel like they are there to execute his agenda and get done the stuff that Trump and Republicans promised to do. So let's talk about arguably the most important person in Congress right now, Republican Speaker

Mike Johnson. You published a profile of him recently and spent some time with him. After a year and a half in this role now, how would you say he settled in? Well, I want to remind people that Mike Johnson got to be speaker of the House kind of by accident, right? A year and a half ago, Kevin McCarthy was the Republican speaker of the House, and he was sort of assassinated from within his own ranks, Caesar-style. And there was a chaotic power vacuum where we had no speaker of the House for several weeks.

And it was as a result of that process that they finally settled on Mike Johnson, who not a lot of people knew very well. And a lot of people, including some of his own colleagues, saw him as sort of a placeholder and didn't think that he would remain speaker after the election. But he hasn't just been a placeholder though. He's actually established himself pretty well in this role. So how did you, how would you say he did that? So I think Johnson gets a lot of credit for really doing the work.

He spent that time really shoring up his relationships with other Republican members, but really with Donald Trump. Johnson correctly assessed that his ticket to power was sticking as close to Trump as possible because it is Trump who has all the power in the Republican Party and because Republican voters want their members of Congress to do what Trump wants to do, Johnson, by sticking super close to Trump, has been able to ally himself with the most powerful figure in the party and Trump has been helpful to him in return. But you know, my reporting suggests that Trump is still a bit skeptical of Johnson.

He is not sure that Johnson is tough enough. Frankly, there's a feeling with everyone around Trump, like they're sort of walking on eggshells and could be fired at any moment. So Johnson sort of knows that he serves at Trump's pleasure and that that relationship with Trump is going to be crucial to not only his success, but really his survival. So Trump so far has been doing a lot of things by executive orders and not so much by working with Congress in the way that past presidents have.

But there is one thing that he has said that he wants out of Congress, which is a big, beautiful bill. What does Trump want in that bill? It's basically the entire Trump agenda, this bill. They're talking about, on the one hand, funding a lot of Trump's priorities, particularly his immigration agenda, which is going to be very expensive, and a lot of things he wants to do on energy. And then they want to dramatically cut the government, make it smaller, right?

And then importantly, you know, the major legislative achievement of Trump's first term was the big tax cut bill in 2017. And most of those tax cuts are going to expire this year if they don't pass them again. So a big part of this legislative package that they're trying to do is to renew those tax cuts, keep them from expiring. But there's also a disagreement between the House and Senate over how to get this done because yes, Trump says he wants one big, beautiful bill, but there's also a plan B,

which is two big, beautiful bills. The Senate has been trying to do two bills at the same time as the House. And so they're sort of working in parallel, sort of racing each other to see who can get there first. But the Senate wants to put sort of all the candy in the first bill, the spending on immigration and energy and so forth, and then spend the rest of the year doing the second bill fighting over tax cuts. So in this race, it seems like the House is ahead at this point because on Tuesday, Johnson narrowly got a budget resolution passed, which is sort of like a first draft of this big, beautiful bill.

And to help us understand what was in that resolution, we have our colleague Siobhan Hughes here who covers Congress. Hey. Hi Siobhan. Thanks for being here. Great to see you. You too. So Siobhan, tell us about this big, beautiful first draft, this budget resolution.

What was in it and what wasn't in it? So, what was in it is something that's just in very, very broad brushstrokes. This is not the package that Congress is going to ultimately vote on. These are the marching orders. And they tell various committees, most predominantly the tax writing committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, that it can cut taxes by a certain amount essentially. And then it gives marching orders to other entities like the House Energy and Commerce

Committee to find a certain amount of savings. And so the action is going to be in these committees where we figure out, for example, does the House Energy and Commerce Committee decide to really make big cuts to Medicaid? And the Ways and Means Committee, how does the chairman, Jason Smith, get around these constraints on how much in taxes he's able to cut and still extend those 2017 tax cuts? So, Siobhan, the Senate has also been working in parallel. How different is what the House passed from what the Senate's done so far?

These are worlds apart because it's starting out with this narrow package focused predominantly on border security and military spending. It's just going to put money into those areas, popular programs among Republicans, and then come back and work out the difficult details of a tax package later. And so these two are on a collision course. Mike Johnson's theory of the case is that if you do everything in one big, beautiful bill, everybody gets something and you smooth over these interparty tensions, get it done

in one shot and you can all move on. And the Senate Republicans' theory of the case is, no, no, no, you risk getting bogged down the same way you did in 2017 when you tried unsuccessfully to repeal the Affordable Care Act. So let's come out of the gates with a win, especially now when Trump is still in his honeymoon phase. So which of these approaches do you think is going to prevail? Well, the theory of the case had been that House Republicans were going to land smack

on their face. And at least with that vote on Tuesday, they showed they were able to start the process. The vote on Tuesday being that they got it passed. They got it passed. It was a nail biter. It squeaked through. If one Republican had gone a different direction, this would not have passed, but they got it done.

And as Molly points out, the reason they got it done was because they brought in their heavy hitter. They brought in Donald Trump, who was on the phone while House members were on that floor, twisting arms and sort of saying, hey, you've just got to open this process. And I do think it's important to give credit to Mike Johnson. This is a big win for him, right? He still has a lot of doubters who don't think he's very good at his job.

But his strategy worked and his strategy is just stick as close to Trump as possible and get Trump to do the heavy lifting when necessary because Republicans in the House and Senate want a lot of things, but they do not want to be seen as defying Trump or rebelling against him. So if Trump comes in and says, I'm going to go after you if you don't do what I want, they're going to do what he wants. Yeah, Molly's right. I mean, sometimes in politics, you don't have to get every single thing right, but you do have to have one good insider idea.

And Mike Johnson's key insight, the key to all of this as Donald Trump, has proved right. This budget resolution, though, I mean, as you were saying, it was the narrowest of margins, 217 to 215 in the House. How much of a victory is that? I mean, and how, is Mike Johnson gonna be able to hold this together to actually get this all the way across the finish line and turn it into law eventually?

Or does this say that it actually might be more tenuous? It is tenuous. There's no question about it, but he's pretty driven about this right now. And one thing that this vote did show is that Republicans who harbored doubts about the package, whether it's conservatives worried that really Congress is about to blow up the deficit or moderates concerned that their Medicaid programs are about to be decimated, they swallowed those concerns and voted yes.

And in a pressure cooker environment on that floor, when you are under pressure from the leader of your party, lawmakers can cave in ways they don't necessarily think they are going to when they are hewing closely to their values. Hmm. I've also been hearing about these town halls where lawmakers have been going back to their districts and getting an earful from their constituents. Elon was going to be the main topic tonight and he's going to continue to be the main topic tonight because we are all freaking pissed off about this.

You're going to hear it and feel it. Do you think that this will put pressure on Republicans and possibly have an impact on Trump's agenda? Well, we've seen some contentious town halls over the past week where people like Congressman McCormick down in Georgia really got an earful when he had a town hall with people horrified by what they saw Elon Musk and Doge and the Republicans doing. The response to that, and you heard Mike Johnson talk about this this week, is that they think it's really an astroturf effort.

They don't think that the Republican grassroots are opposed to what is coming and that instead you've got Democrats riled up grabbing the microphone and that once the dust settles things are going to be okay. But you know beyond that there are some real concerns on the part of Republican voters. I was talking to a congressperson down in Florida who talked about how when some of her Republican officials had been meeting with the government about where they were going to get money to rebuild after hurricanes, they were told, look, we don't know if you're going to be able to get the money. Everything's kind of on pause. We're not sure we're going

to deliver for you. And once those real world issues start to hit in a very personal way, that's what can be the game changer. And that's certainly what Democrats are banking on. The phones in Congress have also been literally ringing off the hook, right? Oh, absolutely. They've been ringing off the hooks to the point that you couldn't get through. Things almost got frozen up. One thing that some people in these town halls have been bringing up is this idea that the

president is overstepping his authority and that Congress is sort of getting steamrolled by all these executive orders. So how does Mike Johnson as the Speaker of the House see these separation of powers questions that have been coming up in the Trump administration? It's a great question and I and it was a major topic of my conversation with Johnson when I interviewed him for this piece. You know, Mike Johnson's background is, he's a constitutional lawyer. And he will tell you he's a big Article I guy.

Now, what is Article I? Literally the first thing in the Constitution is Congress. And the president comes after that. And so Congress, members of Congress will often point to this to say, actually, you know, we're more important. And the Constitution does suggest that the legislative branch is the primary locus of power when it comes to setting policy and the

president is sort of secondary. So you would think that there would be a lot of tension, right, at a time when the president is doing a lot of things that critics and some courts think go beyond the power that the Constitution gives him. Shouldn't it be up to Congress to push back against that, to rein him in, to say, no, actually, that's our job? But Johnson believes that Trump is not doing anything to take away from Congress. He believes that the stuff that Elon Musk is doing, for example, is great because it's

stuff that Congress has tried and failed to do in the past. He says that, you know, they've tried to exercise oversight over agencies such as USAID but been blocked by bureaucrats who wouldn't give them the information they needed to make the cuts they seek, for example. So he completely rejects this idea that there is a constitutional crisis or a separation of powers issue here. And he believes that Congress is doing its job and is going to do its job by legislating and sort of carrying out the things

that Trump has sort of started to do by executive order. One more question for you, Siobhan, before we let you go. There is this big bill that Trump wants, which is all about, you know, the budget. But there's also this other important thing that Congress has to do, which is fund the government, right? Behind the scenes, that is a drama that's probably about to explode onto center stage

because there is this deadline of March 14th. Two weeks. That's pretty soon. It's really right around the corner when you measure it in terms of legislative days and think about how long it takes to get a bill through the floor. And you're seeing Democrats really starting to plant a flag here and say, look, if we do not include in this spending bill some type of

guarantee or assurances that Elon Musk will not take a hacksaw to the programs that we have funded as is our right, then we are going to withhold votes for these spending bills. And the reason that is important is because Mike Johnson, during his entire tenure, has essentially been governing the country in a coalition with Democrats. He needs Democrats in order to pass these spending bills because he's got roughly 15 Republican lawmakers who just have never voted with him to keep the government open. And with these narrow margins that he has, the loss of 15 Republicans always throws him into the arms of Democrats.

And this is their point of maximum leverage. And this may be the place where they take their stand in a way that does send the federal government into a shutdown. — Really, so this time it might be the Democrats that push the government into a shutdown? — Democrats would dispute your characterization of that, Ryan. They would be furious if they thought you were saying it was Democrats, because their perspective is, look, House Republicans own it.

They have enough votes to steer this through the House if they want to. And if it gets broken, that's on them. Well, Siobhan, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you, Siobhan, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you, Siobhan. Oh, it's fun to be back. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going been talking about the legislative branch so far, but let's turn to the judicial

branch. There have been a number of rulings on the Trump administration's actions recently. Where do things stand and what kind of challenges are the courts posing for the Trump administration? It's been kind of all over the place. We've seen, I mean, a blizzard of lawsuits. I frankly cannot keep track of them all. But, you know, they're in various courts in various places with various judges. And those judges have come to different conclusions about the extent to which the things that Trump and Elon Musk

are doing are legal. So what that means in our system, right, is that those decisions get appealed and then judges at higher levels have to sort of resolve these disputes, these disagreements between judges. So I think we are still waiting for this to trickle its way up and we mostly expect that the big questions will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court. And in fact, this week, the Supreme Court actually did weigh in for the first time, but only to put a temporary hold on a lower court's decision. And so I think we're still waiting for the Supreme Court to ultimately resolve a lot of these really pivotal questions about executive power. Are any of these rulings actually stopping the Trump administration's actions?

Have you seen anything actually sort of reverse as a result of this? Well, there have been courts that have said, stop, you can't do this. There have been courts that have said either, you know, you have to pay out this money that you've frozen or put on pause, or no, you may not take this action that you've frozen or put on pause or know you may not take this action that you are trying to take. There are questions about whether the administration is actually complying with some of these rulings, right? There are allegations that one judge has raised the possibility that the administration doesn't

seem to be complying with his order to continue to fund certain programs, for example. So this is part of why some Trump critics are talking about a constitutional crisis, because it's not clear in our system what would happen if the courts told the president to do something and he just said no. All right. So it sounds like the big fireworks are still to come on the judicial front. Let's turn back to the executive branch now. Trump had his first cabinet meeting this week. How would you describe how that went?

It was fascinating and mostly because of someone who is not technically in the cabinet. Right, who spoke first. Who spoke first and spoke nearly as much as the president and spoke far more than any of the actual cabinet secretaries in the room. I am referring, of course, to Elon Musk. So I'd like to have Elon Musk please say a few words. Thank you, Mr. President. Well, I actually just call myself a humble tech support here.

And he continues to be this figure of fascination who seems to have, you know, free rein in the executive branch, although the technicalities of his position are still very unclear. He seems to like it that way, right, because it lets him just sort of go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants. But the lines of authority are very unclear and this cabinet meeting certainly did nothing to resolve it because it seemed like, kind of like the Oval Office meeting a couple weeks ago, you know, Elon is kind of standing there answering all the questions almost on behalf of the president and Trump professes to be delighted by everything that Musk is doing. But there continue to be questions about,

particularly as you point out, you know, now that the cabinet is in place, don't they want to be in charge instead of Elon Musk when it comes to the departments and the workforces that they oversee? So when Elon Musk, for example, sends an email that says, you must answer this email with the five things you did last week. And then several of the cabinet departments run by unequivocal Trump loyalists like, say, Cash Patel at the FBI. And Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense. And they tell their workforces, actually, you don't have to answer the email.

It might compromise security or whatever. And it plays into the congressional discussion as well, because while people think of this as just a bunch of Washington bureaucrats, 85% of federal workers are outside of Washington. You know, these are the doctors at the VA who treat your local veterans. These are the park rangers in Montana who, you know, police the national parks. And so these are regular people in local communities who are being affected by the upheaval in the federal government.

And the Trump appointees who are responsible for their well-being aren't necessarily thrilled about that. There was a moment in the cabinet meeting where Trump turned everybody in the room and said, is anyone unhappy with Elon? Obviously, There was a moment in the cabinet meeting where Trump turned everybody in the room and said, is anyone unhappy with Elon? Obviously, this was a rhetorical question. But do you have a sense that there are other cabinet members that are uneasy with what Elon Musk has been doing?

Certainly, we are not seeing any outward signs of that at this point. And I think you hit on it exactly, that by staging a sort of show like this and having everyone voice their approval, Trump is able to create the appearance that everyone is on board with everything that is happening. But I think you can see from the way that this back and forth has gone down with Musk and the emails, that there is tension there.

on down with Musk and the emails, that there is tension there. Great, any final thoughts before we let you go? Nothing much going on, right? As usual, very quiet. Yep. Well, thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Ryan. Before we go, do you have any questions

about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal at wsj.com. Trump 2.0 is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Katherine Whalen, with help from Lisa Wang.

Molly Ball is the Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent. I'm Ryan Knudson. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music in this episode by Peter Leonard, Billy Libby, and Bobby Lord. Fact checking by Kate Gallagher. Artwork by James Walton. Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning.

I will be off though, so you'll be in good hands with Kate Linebaugh. See you then.