Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and soon to be Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.-S.D.) need to go huge in first budget reconciliation act, because this might be the only bite of the apple they get.
The political reality in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is that the majority margin is unstable and might not exist in October 2025 if resignations, illness or even naturally occurring deaths winnow their current 220-to-215 majority. As of now, due to presidential appointments ravaging the House majority, the count at the beginning of the upcoming Congress is expected to be as thin as one vote at 216 to 215.
The internal political debate that is raging in Washington, D.C. is how far the Republican trifecta of House, Senate and Executive Branch control can go in the first swing at passing a budget reconciliation bill which is not subject to the filibuster in the Senate.
Should the Republicans include in this bill the entire wish list of extending the Trump tax cuts from the first term, ending taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, bolstering border security, restoring sane energy policy by ending Green New Deal tax laws implemented under the Inflation Reduction Act, ending the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service by 87,000 agents, reducing the size of the federal workforce and many other issues?
Or should the Republicans wait to tackle many of these issues — particularly holding off keeping the Trump tax cuts which is important to the incoming president’s economic growth plan — until October or November?
The instability of their House majority demands that they choose the boldest plan possible and pass it, leaving little undone.
From a political and economic standpoint, it is in every Republican’s interest that the economy be thriving when they come up for re-election in 2026. Creating tax uncertainty by failing to extend the first-term Trump tax cuts for the corporations who the president will be trying to incentivize to invest in growing America’s industrial and resource-development base undermines the Trump economic-growth plan.
It would also be very unwise to not immediately keep President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to end the taxes on tips and overtime. The Social Security tax issue may need to be part of a separate, independent bi-partisan deal, but it would be a slap in the face to those hourly wage and tip workers to not deliver on a promise that directly and immediately impacts their take home pay.
The private Department Of Government Efficiency is calling for cutting the number of federal government employees along with many other changes. If Congress is going to act on any of their recommendations, it is critical that they start with a ten percent reduction in force or more in the budget reconciliation act with a projected savings of about half a trillion dollars over a ten-year period.
Border security was a fundamental divide between the president-elect and his opponents and needs to be handled through budget reconciliation which does not require the votes of Senate Democrats. So, anything in this area that can be included in the reconciliation bill must be in the first one Republicans pass into law.
Unwinding the tax incentives to produce unreliable energy sources is essential for inclusion as well. These incentives act as a disincentive to invest in fossil-fuel energy generation — and are designed to push out fossil fuels and nuclear energy from the all-of-the-above energy strategy that Republicans are fond of talking about.
For Trump’s energy policy to work, government must take its thumb off the scale in favor of renewables, and the only place that can get done is through the budget reconciliation act. Failure to do so will leave in place a tax system designed to drive capital investment away from oil and natural gas and toward wind and solar. We have an abundance of domestic natural gas, oil and coal. What Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act did was squeeze capital investment away from developing and using this abundance.
Ultimately, anything left out of the first budget reconciliation act may not find a place in any subsequent bill, even if the House and Senate majorities hold for the full two years. In late 2025, many members of Congress will be turning their eyes toward the 2026 election as the primary season will be a few months away. No one knows if, with their razor-thin majorities, the historically contentious House and Senate GOP conferences can politically hold together for a future BRA.
In 2017, Republicans attempted to partially keep their promise by using the budget reconciliation bill to try to partially repeal Obamacare. It fell apart as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) surprised the Senate GOP leadership by voting against the bill, causing it to fail and proving that legislative coalitions are fragile.
That is why the old saying to strike while the iron is hot should be Republican leadership’s and Trump’s battle cry. They might not get another chance to keep their 2024 election promises and being tepid on the first budget reconciliation bill will only lead to failure to make the changes needed to restore America’s greatness.
Republicans need to go big. They were elected to solve problems and the budget reconciliation process is one of the few vehicles which allow the majority party to assert its will in Congress to make change. So, just do it.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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