Johnson under fierce pressure to deliver budget vote amid market turmoil

By Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox and Haley Talbot, CNN

(CNN) — As economic fears escalate, Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team are making a frantic push Tuesday to convince GOP hardliners to fall in line on a critical House vote this week that will allow Congress to finally move ahead on President Donald Trump’s first big legislative package.

The pressure was already high for Johnson, with Trump eager for a political win in his first 100 days in office. Now, with the global trade war throwing financial markets into turmoil, Johnson and his team insist there is no room for failure on the tax cuts, border security and spending cuts measure.

“I think my colleagues understand that markets don’t like uncertainty. And I think there’s sort of renewed initiative behind this,” said South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, a leadership ally, arguing that the GOP needs to articulate its plans to grow the economy to help stave off market jitters.

With days to go until a two-week recess, Trump is personally working to convince some GOP skeptics, summoning a small group of Republicans to the White House later Tuesday. And Johnson is applying his own pressure, having met Monday night with the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and then threatening to keep members in Washington through the weekend if they don’t succeed.

In a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, Johnson stressed “unity” within the GOP, urging members to “get it done” and move onto the more important step of drafting Trump’s actual agenda, according to an attendee.

The Louisiana Republican needs his conference to formally greenlight the Senate GOP’s budget blueprint to unlock the drafting process for Trump’s agenda — despite the vast differences on plans for spending cuts between the two chambers. But as of Tuesday morning, Republican leaders were still dealing with at least a dozen firm “no” votes and many more undecided.

Asked whether GOP leaders plan to hold the vote Wednesday, Johnson told CNN: “Currently that’s the plan.”

At the center of the tension: conservatives’ fear that Senate Republicans won’t follow through on substantial spending cuts after their bill outlined just $4 billion in cuts rather than the House’s $1.5 trillion. Senate Republicans and House GOP leadership have urged conservatives to trust the process, arguing the amount of cuts is merely a floor to provide the Senate maximum flexibility to comply with complex chamber rules.

“The Senate budget does not reduce deficits. The Senate budget would increase deficits,” Texas Rep. Chip Roy said. “I’m tired of the fake math in the swamp, and that’s what it is. It’s fake math.”

Those same spending cuts have caused anxiety among Johnson’s more moderate ranks, and he huddled with many of those members Monday night to reassure them. GOP leaders must convince both their hardliners and their centrists to vote for the same budget blueprint — a task that is extremely difficult given that Johnson has little room for error with only three votes to spare on the floor.

GOP leaders, however, remain privately confident they can ultimately get the votes. In the last several months, Trump’s ability to unite the GOP conference has surprised even Democrats. After years of rejecting short-term spending bills, the president was able to convince almost every House Republican to back a bill that kept the government funded through September. And the House already passed one budget resolution earlier this year, despite calls from some conservatives that the spending cuts should have been even steeper.

Leadership has tried to impress upon members that the bigger fight comes later after the budget passes and Senate and House negotiators go to work on a massive tax and spending cut bill that will outline cuts to specific programs across the federal government. The challenge will then be uniting swing-district Republicans and conservatives behind those slashes to spending.

“I have tried to make the point this is not the real fight,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole of Louisiana said. “You either trust your leadership or you don’t. You either trust the President or you don’t.”

Behind the scenes, Johnson has been huddling with some of his most vulnerable members about the next steps, trying to assure them that the House and Senate will work in tandem to find an agreement on the savings and tax cuts before forcing vulnerable members to vote on the floor.

“The House has to do its work, and we’re going to do it in close collaboration with the Senate and the White House, and all of that will begin as soon as we can get past start,” Johnson told reporters Monday night.

“Time is not … our friend here. We have to get this done. We have to deliver for the American people. This is all of our priorities wrapped into one big, beautiful bill, and we can’t get to the bill unless we get the resolution done,” he said.

When asked for his pitch to skeptical far-right members, Johnson said: “We got to continue moving the ball up the field, and that’s my message to these colleagues.”

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