House Republican leadership met on Friday morning to discuss outstanding disagreements on how to kick off the reconciliation process, according to two senior Republicans, granted anonymity to share the private deliberations.
House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) was in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office for at least an hour around Friday morning’s vote series. Johnson’s senior policy adviser, Derek Theurer, who was previously chief tax counsel for the Ways and Means committee, was seen exiting the speaker’s office during that period.
According to people who participated in the conversation, the focus of the discussion was how to address disagreements between Smith and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on how to kick off the reconciliation process, which would allow Republicans to pass trillions of dollars of tax cut extensions without Democratic support.
Thune has said he would like to pass a non-tax reconciliation bill, including energy and defense policies, within the first 30 days of President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration. Smith has pushed back on that idea, arguing that Republicans need to include everything in one big reconciliation bill to pass it through the House’s slim majority.
“The other piece that people are underestimating is we are very similarly situated in the House like the Senate in past reconciliations,” said House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who was also seen in the speaker’s office Friday morning. “Now they have a bigger margin than we do. So it’s going to be a bigger challenge for us to get to a magic number to pass it with only a two-seat margin. And the more policies you put into the mix, the more you can attract different constituencies.”
When asked whether the Ways and Means committee and Senate Republicans were close to ironing out their differences, committee member David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) shook his head. “That dance is going to go on for quite a while,” he said.