President Donald Trump threw his support on Wednesday behind the House’s budget blueprint — throwing a curveball into the Senate’s plan to vote on a competing version this week.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said both chambers are “doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together” but added that the House budget was preferable because it would fold all of his priorities together instead of separating them into two bills like the Senate GOP plan would.
“We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’ It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump said in the post.
Trump’s announcement comes the day after Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that the Senate would take up its budget framework this week. Under the Senate GOP’s plan, Republicans will first try to pass a border, energy and defense bill and then come back later this year and try to pass a separate bill on tax cuts.
The House budget plan would package all of those together into one sweeping bill. Speaker Mike Johnson plans to bring the measure to the floor next week but is still trying to win over a number of holdouts.
Trump also threw a curveball into Johnson’s plan — which sketches out hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts to Medicaid and other safety-net programs — on Tuesday night when he said in a Fox News interview that “Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched” aside from efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
