I wanted to direct your attention to the news today that House Republicans have introduced a budget outline. This is a big, big deal. It may seem like ordinary budget politics is moving on a separate path from the ongoing constitutional crisis. But they are deeply intertwined. Framing everything is the fact that House Republicans have only the tiniest of margins in the House — 1 to 3 votes, depending on a few different factors. It’s seemed highly doubtful that they can get everything they want to do or need to do in a single bill — Trump tax cuts, the massive spending cuts to pay for those tax cuts and also what the Freedom Caucus demands, a debt-ceiling hike, border spending, more. This is why the House and the Senate have been going back and forth on one massive bill or two bills.
Today, they formalized their decision to go with one bill. That bill includes extending the tax cuts as well as those massive spending cuts and — this is critical — a debt-ceiling hike for about two years. It is a big, big question whether they can pull this off. They are essentially caught between the Freedom Caucus, which wants even bigger cuts on the one hand, and basically anyone who wants to run next year in any kind of competitive state or district. Then there’s the debt-ceiling hike, which Republicans never want to vote for.
This amounts to a big, big all-or-nothing gamble. If they can do it it’s a big win and they rob Democrats of any debt-ceiling leverage. If they fail, the whole train breaks down in a really embarrassing and politically consequential way.
But there are two key points to note. The immediate leverage for Democrats comes next month when Republicans need to pass a new continuing resolution to prevent a shutdown. Indeed, the other option was to pile a lot of this in with a continuing resolution. Not taking that route makes clear they thought Democrats’ price would be one Trump wouldn’t accept. So this leaves the Democrats’ main near-term leverage intact. If they do pull this off, it will be with budget cuts which will be both devastating on every front but also a bill which Democrats will be eager to run on in 2026.
There’s no big takeaway here other than this being an immensely consequential gamble. So we should be watching it closely and aware of how tightly it’s bound up with the larger struggle over Trump and Musk’s unconstitutional actions.