House Majority Whip Tom Emmer is calling on the Senate to “pick up the pace” on advancing President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, arguing that congressional Republicans should be moving with greater urgency to enact the president’s priorities.
Emmer’s public criticism of the Senate’s timeline comes as House and Senate Republicans have yet to reach a deal on a budget blueprint that would lay the groundwork for a forthcoming tax and spending bill to pass the president’s agenda. Though Senate Republicans have taken a victory lap after confirming the president’s nominees at a record pace and sending several pieces of legislation to the president’s desk, Emmer is warning that the Senate must avoid slow-walking passage of the president’s diverse set of priorities and that both chambers must pass a compromise budget resolution quickly.
The Daily Caller News Foundation spoke to Emmer in his office Friday. The whip exuded confidence that House GOP leadership will wrangle enough members to vote for a reconciliation package after scoring major wins by passing an initial budget resolution and government funding bill despite a razor-thin majority. Looming over the conversation, however, was Emmer’s concern that the Senate is moving too slowly on the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process, potentially delaying how quickly voters see Republican lawmakers delivering on Trump’s campaign promises before the midterms.
“I think the President might have to get involved there,” Emmer told the DCNF. “The Senate has a certain physical memory that they’ve developed over the last 30 years. They don’t do anything. They sit still. They think the world’s going to wait for them, and when they’re good and ready, they’ll get moving.”
Emmer acknowledged that Senate Republicans have done a “fantastic job” confirming 21 of the president’s cabinet nominees, outpacing the confirmation schedules of the Biden administration and the first Trump administration. But he argued the Senate is failing to move quickly to pass an identical budget framework with the House and begin writing a reconciliation bill.
“All of a sudden now you’re starting to hear someone [say] well, we might get to that in August,” Emmer said in a reference to a report that one GOP senator floated an August deadline to pass the tax and spending bill. “I got news for you. We’re going to get to it as soon as we can. The American people are counting on it. Donald Trump is demanding it. It’s going to happen.”
“They’re [the Senate] going to have to get a little urgency under their backside,” Emmer added.
House and Senate Republicans initially passed competing budget resolutions with both chambers articulating diverging views over how best to pass the president’s agenda.
Trump appeared to endorse the House’s plan to incorporate all of the president’s priorities in one massive bill, but he also thanked the Senate for pushing ahead on the chamber’s slimmed-down budget resolution focused on border security, which leadership touted as a backup plan.
Both chambers will need to pass a compromise budget resolution to reconcile the differences in their initial budget blueprints, which is the next stage budget reconciliation process.
Emmer floated passing an identical budget resolution with the Senate during the three-week work period that begins when Congress returns to Washington on Monday. The majority whip pegged April or early May as target dates for completing a forthcoming reconciliation bill and said both chambers should be “voting on it as soon as we can.”
“I do think the Senate’s probably got to pick up the pace a little bit on some of that policy stuff,” Emmer added.
Senate Republicans have noted the conference has been working on budget reconciliation since before the election. The Senate had been in session for ten straight weeks until Friday with a large amount of floor time taken up by processing nominees. The House took three recess breaks during that time.
“We want to get it done in a very timely manner,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso assured reporters on March 12. “To me, the sooner the better.”
“For those of us who were here in 2017, we know it takes a while to get this process done,” Barrasso added.
GOP lawmakers are aiming to provide additional funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to fast-track the president’s deportation agenda, boost defense spending and increase oil and gas leases in a budget reconciliation package this year. They are also working to enact the president’s sweeping tax priorities, which include no taxes on tips, overtime pay or Social Security benefits, in addition to raising the state and local tax deduction cap in the budget bill.
At the heart of Trump’s legislative priorities is a permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts the president signed into law during his first term in office. The tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2025 and failure to enact an extension would result in a tax increase for most U.S. households in 2026.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are in agreement with Trump on passing a permanent extension of the tax cuts. Senate Republicans have suggested the initial House budget resolution will have to be rewritten, in part, to allow for tax cut permanence.
However, a considerable number of deficit hawks in the House and Senate are concerned about the deficit impact of a permanent extension, which could threaten to further delay passage of Trump’s legislative agenda.
Emmer delivered a veiled warning to lawmakers opposed to employing a relatively untested baseline to score a permanent extension of the tax cuts, calling the government’s traditional accounting method “one of the biggest scams in the world.”
“They should understand that Donald Trump is the leader of this party, and Donald Trump ran on some very specific things, one of which was to make his tax cuts permanent,” Emmer said. “It’s going to happen.”
“I know I’ve got members on my side [saying] ‘Well, we got to pay for it. We got to do this,’” Emmer continued. “And that’s great. But understand, Donald Trump made these promises on the campaign trail, and if we want to be successful, then our job is to honor the promises that he made.”
The brewing clash between GOP leadership and deficit hawks over fiscal policy and how much spending GOP lawmakers should cut to help offset the cost of the president’s agenda is expected to dominate Congress’ attention during the next several months. Emmer will be working to get his members in alignment.
“At the end of the day, what matters to me is that it’s done, and then we get to work on executing,” the whip added.
The White House did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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