President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are beginning to put forward their economic platform ahead of the midterms. The party’s most politically vulnerable lawmakers aren’t totally on board.
The Republican Study Committee, or RSC, a caucus made up of a vast majority of the House Republican Conference, announced Tuesday the framework for a second partisan budget bill it positioned as an answer to Americans’ affordability concerns.
In it are proposals for ambitious cost-cutting to the tune of $1.6 trillion, including cuts to health care spending and welfare programs, as well as policies, such as Trump’s proposal for zero to low down payments for prospective homeowners and deregulatory policies for the energy industry.
Instead of uniting the party behind a singular platform, the proposal highlighted divides within the GOP.
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“I think [the RSC] should be advancing more two-party bills right now,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus whose district voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. “It’s the best thing to do for our country.”
Rep. Don Bacon, another moderate Republican, also called for a more bipartisan approach.
That is exactly the opposite of what RSC members demanded Tuesday.
“The only way forward in this fight, unfortunately, is without Democrats. They refuse to work across the aisle, even at the expense of their own constituents,” the committee’s chair, Rep. August Pfluger, told reporters. “We’re using this reconciliation process to fix what they broke.”
In a speech Tuesday to autoworkers in Detroit, Trump, too, took his familiar partisan tack. He said that the White House would unveil more initiatives to lower prices.
“In the coming weeks, I will be laying out even more plans to help bring back affordability,” Trump said. “And again, remember, that’s a fake word by Democrats. Prices were too high. They caused the high prices.”
Trump hinted at unveiling a “health care affordability framework” this week that he said would reduce premiums, lower drug prices, increase price transparency and demand accountability from insurance companies.
The RSC’s proposal includes a number of proposals along similar lines, such as reforming the Affordable Care Act subsidy structure so money flows through health savings accounts directly to patients, to be codified into law.
Whether moderate Republicans want to touch health care in a competitive election year, however, is not as clear cut.
On the question of HSAs specifically, both Bacon and Rep. Jeff Hurd pointed to legislation they introduced with Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi and Josh Gottheimer to extend the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits for two years. The Senate has been looking to move that legislation forward with expanded HSAs. Both are watching to see what the Senate does.
“One of the things we need to be thinking about is what the Senate is going to do with the bill that we passed over,” Hurd said. “I know there’s been some discussion about that, including some health savings account provision. Sen. [Bill] Cassidy, I know, has been a champion of that. Exactly how that looks, we’ll have to see, but certainly it’s something I’m interested in seeing and look forward to discussing with my colleagues.”
There is a contingent of Republicans more than willing to pursue another Republican-only bill. Rep. Dan Meuser told NOTUS that his colleagues may not have the option to wait.
“Let’s face it. Right now, it’s 50/50 at best on the midterms,” he said. “So, if we really want to deliver upon what President Trump was elected for, it seems reconciliation is the best way to do that.”
Rep. Max Miller told NOTUS he thinks Republicans can muscle something through.
“We’ve got a long way to go, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t get it done,” Miller said. “I mean, everyone told us that we couldn’t pass the CR, or we couldn’t pass reconciliation, or we can’t do X, Y and Z, and somehow, some way, we always are able to figure it out.”
Miller was one of six members who said they were unaware of or had not seen the RSC’s framework before being asked by NOTUS. As for what would be in a second reconciliation package, he was vague.
“If we have a second bite of the apple when it comes to reconciliation, I would just want to identify what the priorities would be. But I think it’s possible,” he told NOTUS.
Fitzpatrick said he is bringing an open mind to the RSC’s policy ideas but expressed skepticism about where a second reconciliation framework may be headed.
“I don’t know how serious these talks are,” Fitzpatrick said.
The White House is slated to unveil housing affordability plans next week when Trump attends the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Trump has already suggested barring institutional investors from buying single-family homes and directing the federal government to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds.
For months, Trump has called affordability a “Democrat hoax,” pointing instead to various economic indicators, including core inflation, GDP and investment commitments, which suggest a booming economy.
But aides around the president and Republicans outside of the White House have acknowledged that affordability is the front on which the midterms will be decided.
As for whether the president is more open to another reconciliation bill to address these concerns, that remains to be seen. In October, Trump said, “We don’t need any more bills.”
Asked if the president had changed his mind, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told NOTUS that “the Administration is committing to working with Congress and using every lever of executive power to deliver for the American people, from securing working-class tax cuts to inking deals to lower drug prices.”
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