Speaker Mike Johnson has cleared a major hurdle toward unlocking the massive, party-line bill he’s pursuing to enact President Donald Trump’s vast domestic agenda. Now he’s got more jumping to do.
On Thursday, as Republican hard-liners celebrated a concession they won from party leaders to force deeper spending cuts as part of the GOP’s sweeping policy push, centrists expressed deep alarm about the trajectory of the massive legislation that will include border security, energy, defense and tax provisions.
The emerging fault lines are many: GOP members in high-tax blue states are concerned that the plan doesn’t leave enough room to expand the state and local tax deduction. And Senate Republicans and some House hard-liners aren’t ready to give up on a competing two-bill plan.
But Johnson’s most immediate problem comes from swing-district Republicans who believe that the steep spending cuts Johnson wants across Medicaid, food assistance and other safety-net programs for low-income Americans could cost them their seats — and Johnson his razor-thin GOP majority.
“I don’t know where they’re going to get the cuts,” said Rep. David Valadao, who represents a heavily Democratic district in central California, as he left the Capitol on Thursday.
The House Budget Committee cleared the fiscal blueprint for the massive policy bill on a party-line vote late Thursday night, and Johnson intends to bring it to the floor when the House returns from recess later this month.
But with a two-vote majority, Johnson has virtually no room for error. And opposition from members like Valadao could force him and committee chairs to go back to the drawing board.
Low-key and soft-spoken, Valadao is the stylistic and ideological opposite of the fire-breathing hard-liners on Johnson’s right flank. His district in California’s Central Valley is one of the six Hispanic-majority GOP seats where more than 20 percent of households receive food aid benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is being targeted under the GOP budget for some $230 billion in spending cuts.
“Obviously Medicaid and SNAP are ones that I’m very much watching,” Valadao said.
He believes he is speaking for a larger group of House Republicans who are worried about what the cuts will mean for their districts. Johnson’s own Louisiana district has a high rate of households that rely on food assistance, and hospital systems across the country rely on Medicaid…
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