Budget fight tests the limits of Trump loyalty in Congress

By Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke is a Donald Trump loyalist.

Yet even the former Trump Cabinet secretary isn’t currently willing to go along with party leaders’ plans to muscle the president’s deficit-busting agenda through Congress with hardly any attempt to pay for it.

Zinke was among multiple Republicans privately raising doubts about the Senate’s budget plan in a tense GOP meeting Tuesday morning, voicing concerns about passing pricey tax cuts with only $4 billion in spending reductions — all while raising the nation’s borrowing limit by another $5 trillion.

“The math doesn’t add up,” a frustrated Zinke told fellow Republicans, according to two people in the room.

Zinke is not alone, with at least a dozen House Republicans saying they were willing to reject the Senate’s budget plans despite the hard push from Trump himself, who is eager to show tangible progress on his agenda to battered financial markets as his big reciprocal tariffs take effect.

Their collision is the latest reminder that some Republicans on Capitol Hill who consider themselves “true believers” on fiscal conservatism are still adjusting to following a president who has never made battling the deficit a top priority.

GOP leaders believe that they will ultimately win over enough skeptics to adopt the Senate budget and take that key first step toward the White House’s agenda — punting the bigger fight until this summer. But the fate of the plan remains uncertain early Wednesday, even as Johnson plans to force the vote on the floor later in the day.

More than a half-dozen of these House fiscal hawks told CNN they’re not willing to abandon a core political mission that drove many of them to Congress in the first place: Taming the national debt before it tanks the US economy.

This gang of hardline fiscal hawks will be perhaps the most important bloc of votes for Trump and GOP leaders this year. One senior GOP aide said many of the members see themselves on a “divine mission” — and so are unafraid to buck their own leaders and president on the issue.

In an interview Tuesday afternoon, Zinke said he, of course, wants Trump to succeed but also said he and others aren’t willing to rubberstamp the costly plan without a serious push to get federal spending under control.

“We’ve kicked the can long enough,” Zinke told CNN.

Key Republicans insist it’s ‘right time’ to tackle spending

Since his reelection in November, Trump has successfully talked ultraconservative House Republicans into backing a number of difficult votes on spending. Many Republicans voted for their first debt limit increase or stopgap spending bill, at Trump’s request. But many of them stressed that the budget vote is different.

“I want to see something that is enforceable,” GOP Rep. Lloyd Smucker, the vice chair of the House Budget Committee, said in an interview Tuesday.

Smucker — who is opposed to the current Senate budget — is proof that the House’s most vocal fiscal hawks aren’t limited to the usual rabble-rousers in the House Freedom Caucus. And some of them have already stomached big spending increases during Trump’s first term, when Congress passed big increases in defense spending as well as the 2017 tax cuts.

As the vice chair of the House budget panel, Smucker has hardly ever threatened to oppose a party priority. But he said he has talked to “anyone who will listen,” including Johnson, about why he won’t accept a proposal that doesn’t promise real cuts.

“I want to be a productive member of the team. I love what the president is doing. I want to support him. I think he can be the one to have the legacy of changing our fiscal state. And I think this is the right time to begin to do that,” Smucker told CNN about why he is currently opposed to the Senate’s budget blueprint, despite pressure from his party.

And even as some GOP leaders stress they need to reassure the markets of Trump’s plans, Smucker said it’s more important to show that Congress won’t simply rack up more spending: “I would be concerned about sending a signal to the markets that neither party cares at all about the debt.”

‘Trump doesn’t control the Senate’

So far, GOP leaders and Trump are focusing their pressure campaign on members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, who have made up some of the fiercest resistance to the Senate plans.

Trump hosted a group of those conservatives at the White House on Tuesday afternoon where they sat, alongside Speaker Mike Johnson, to talk about how to move forward. That came after a Monday night Freedom Caucus meeting in which Johnson personally sat at the table to talk about the plan.

But House hardliners have raised major alarms at changes made by the Senate GOP, pointing to how senators watered down provisions seeking deeper spending cuts. Johnson can only afford to lose three House GOP votes and far more are warning they plan to oppose the plan — including Rep. Chip Roy, despite attending that White House meeting with Trump.

“We have to take what’s in front of us, and we have to do the math and decide whether or not that’s going to produce deficits that are bigger or smaller,” Roy told CNN after returning from the White House. “All I see are promises. I do not believe in promises in Washington. … The Senate has sent a bill to us that doesn’t add up.”

One of his fellow Freedom Caucus conservatives, Rep. Eli Crane, was even more blunt, telling CNN’s Manu Raju he’s “leaning” no on the Senate plan, calling it “pathetic” and “a joke.”

The Arizona Republican said only “serious cuts” could get him to a yes, and asked if assurances from Trump could get him to back it, he answered, “Unfortunately, you know, President Trump doesn’t control the Senate.”

Both Roy and Crane backed the House GOP’s earlier budget plan, which called for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts — despite their own hesitations about backing a policy to raise the debt limit.

One of the authors of that spending cuts plan is GOP Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who initially pushed for as much as $8 trillion in cuts as part of Trump’s legislative package.

Now, as he’s asked to swallow just $4 billion in cuts instead, Norman said he’s willing to walk away with nothing, rather than risk a deficit-busting bill.

“I will go home. If we’re gonna play the games like we’re playing, then what’s the use? I’m not playing. I’ll go home,” Norman told CNN.

That same red line applies to even Trump’s personal policy demands, such as even more tax hikes beyond what was in his 2017 bill.

“If you cut taxes for Social Security, tips — which the president wants — it’s got a price tag,” Norman said. “This stuff is real serious.”

CNN’s Manu Raju and Alison Main contributed to this report.

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