Hill Republicans brace for another grueling fight over Trump’s spending cuts

Congressional Republicans have passed Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package, capping a painful ordeal that put even members who supported it in a tough spot.

Now, many Republicans are wincing at the prospect of having to do it all over again.

White House budget director Russ Vought said Thursday that a second request to rescind congressionally approved spending is likely coming soon. That will mean another bitter go-round on an issue that inflamed GOP institutionalists who worry about the administration’s steady encroachment on Congress’ power of the purse — even as many fiscal hawks embraced the move to cut spending in any way possible.

Some Republicans think next time will be different. They believe the White House understands, after multiple warnings from lawmakers, that another norm-shattering rescissions package couldn’t land in GOP laps without a lot more transparency around what, exactly, the administration wanted Congress to cut.

“I think we’ll probably take a different approach,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said in an interview Thursday, adding, “I think the lesson on this one is, we need to be including the chair and making sure we’re working together.”

Mullin was referring to Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Maine Republican was so piqued that she voted against the package alongside just one other GOP senator, fellow appropriator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The Appropriations Committee chair cited qualms with both the nature of the original, $9.4 billion spending cut request and the information deficit around the scale and scope of that request.

“There can’t be too much communication; there can’t be too much information with senators. … We’ve got to obviously make sure that everybody feels like they're getting all the information they need,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who spearheaded the rescissions process in the Senate, said in an interview Thursday about lessons learned.

This was something former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was clamoring for. He ultimately supported the rescissions bill on final passage, but made his irritation with the administration clear after opposing a procedural vote to advance it.

“OMB is the problem. They won't tell us how they're going to apply the cut,” the Kentucky Republican said of the Office of Management and Budget this week. “I want to make it clear I don't have any problem with reducing spending. … They would like a blank check is what they would like, and I don't think that's appropriate.”

But it’s not clear whether the White House is, in fact, prepared to change its approach. At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters Thursday morning, Vought appeared unrepentant about the posture the OMB had taken in spearheading the $9 billion spending cut request, which would slash public broadcasting and global health initiatives.

“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,” Vought said.

Without a course correction from the administration, there’s no guarantee Republicans would welcome another interruption of their legislative agenda to conduct another exercise that exposes them to Democratic attacks or forces them to potentially cross the president.

That Congress is now entering the pivotal weeks before the Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown could further diminish the enthusiasm for another rescissions package.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was noncommittal this week when asked about Congress signing off on additional funding cuts, pointing instead to the appropriations process as his top priority.

“We’ll see what the future holds, but the goal right now is to get into the appropriations process. Let's start marking up bills, trying to get them on the floor,” Thune said. “So my hope would be that that's the way we deal with a lot of these issues.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, also suggested his priorities were shifting as the funding cliff deadline approaches. Asked what appetite his colleagues had for more rescissions packages, Hoeven said it “depends who you ask.” While they could try to do rescissions and appropriations, “I want to get the approps process going,” Hoeven said.

Even Schmitt, who confirmed that “additional rescissions are being contemplated,” conceded the Senate is now facing a major scheduling crunch.

Democrats are also warning that pursuing more GOP-only rescissions packages could blow up bipartisan government funding talks, with trust between the two parties already eroding in light of Vought’s latest comments.

Top Senate Appropriations Democrat Patty Murray (Wash.), during an Appropriations Committee meeting after Vought’s comments, called the GOP’s multi-part rescissions push a “dangerous new precedent.”

“Bipartisanship does not end with any one line being crossed,” she said. “It erodes over time, bit by bit. And frankly I am alarmed by how quickly that erosion is happening.”

At the same time, GOP leaders may have no choice but to plow ahead, especially in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson, his top lieutenants and Trump himself have repeatedly promised votes on an elaborate patchwork of more rescissions packages, party-line reconciliation bills and spending cuts in government funding measures. They did so to appease fiscal hawks who balked at the trillions in new spending in the just-enacted Trump megabill.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a close ally of Trump, said in an interview earlier this month that she’s discussed with the president and Republican leadership a “multi-step plan” to cut spending that includes “massive rescissions” and more reconciliation bills.

Vought indicated the White House is well along in planning the next rescissions package. While Mullin said that Republicans are “not putting the cart too far before the horse” in planning what could be included, some members have had “high-level brainstorming” sessions with the White House budget chief on the subject.

Vought has also already started calling GOP senators and is getting an eager reception from some of his Hill allies.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said in an interview Thursday that he pushed Vought during a closed-door lunch Tuesday to send additional spending cut packages to Capitol Hill. The budget director, he added, called him on Wednesday morning and said, according to Kennedy, “another is coming your way.”

“I'm ready to gobble them up,” Kennedy added, before imitating a turkey: “Gobble, gobble.”

Cassandra Dumay, Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully McManus contributed to this report.