The House and Senate are battling over which chamber will take credit for passing President Donald Trump’s campaign promises in the form of a budget bill.
Speaker Mike Johnson fought back Tuesday against efforts by Sen. Lindsey Graham to upstage the House, dismissing the South Carolina senator’s budget proposal as dead on arrival in the lower body.
“I’m afraid it’s a non-starter over here. And, you know, I’ve expressed that to him, and there is no animus or daylight between us,” Johnson said. “We all are trying to get to the same achievable objectives, and there’s just, you know, different ideas on how to get there.”
Graham insisted he’s a “huge fan” of Johnson and that “nothing would please me more than one big, beautiful bill passed by the House.”
But the clock is ticking and the fractured House Republican Conference can’t get its act together quickly enough, Graham suggested.
“I talked to President Trump over the weekend. He wants to get results,” Graham told reporters in the Capitol as a winter storm approached the capital region.
Graham said he and other GOP senators got an earful from Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, and budget director, Russ Vought, during their weekly closed-door luncheon on Tuesday.
“Tom Homan said, ‘I am begging you for money.’ Russ Vought said that we’re running out of money for ICE. We can’t rob other accounts any longer,” Graham said.
“I’m urging the speaker to invite them over and let them tell the House what they told us,” he said, taking a thinly veiled jab at the speaker’s management.
Graham, a staunch Trump ally, unveiled his budget proposal last week, with the bill heading for committee consideration on Wednesday and Thursday. Trying to catch up, the House Budget Committee is now slated meet on Thursday even as GOP members struggle to hash out discrepancies on key issues.
Johnson says the lower body is on track and the Senate shouldn’t jump the gun on bypassing the House. “But I told my good friend Lindsey that I have to manage the House in the best and only way it can be managed, and that they’re going to have to give us a little more patience,” the speaker added.
The two chambers have been at odds over strategy, with a number of top Senate Republicans pushing for a two-bill approach while House GOP leadership has advocated to move forward with “one big beautiful bill,” as Trump initially requested.
“What guides my thinking is the problem we have now—we’re running out of money,” Graham said on Tuesday after hearing from Holman and Vought.
Complicating matters, a handful of conservatives are pushing for two bills and steeper cuts, which could be difficult to pass through both chambers.
House Republicans are growing increasingly anxious about the state of play, and frustrated with Johnson.
“The House should have already moved. Instead, you see the Senate moving first, which is why the House Freedom Caucus put out our plan,” Rep. Andy Ogles told the Daily Beast. “And look, we just saw the big game on Sunday. Both teams have to call plays. Some of those plays are good, some of them are bad, some of them work. Some of them don’t.”
The bottom line, the Tennessee lawmaker said: “It’s time for the House to call and play and try to execute, and if we don’t get it done, you call the next play. But this standing around in a room and having the same conversation over and over again is not going to work.”
