House approves budget plan, opens door to Trump agenda

House Republicans coalesced and adopted the Senate’s budget rewrite Thursday after spending the week bashing the upper chamber’s proposal as an unserious attempt to cut spending.

Closed-door meetings and assurances that Senate Republicans were serious about steep spending cuts, in line with the House budget blueprint, helped sway frustrated fiscal hawks and save President Trump’s agenda from a costly derailment.

The 216-214 House vote to adopt the budget resolution tees up the filibuster-proof reconciliation process that Republicans plan to use to pass sweeping tax and spending cuts, border and defense funding, and energy policy changes.

Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, voted against the plan.

The holdouts who flipped relied on written and verbal commitments from Republican leaders that the reconciliation bill would include at least $1.5 trillion in cuts and would not add to the deficit when factoring in an estimated $2.5 trillion worth of economic growth.

“If we don’t, there will be a mutiny, and they know it,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican.

On Thursday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, held a joint press conference to announce a shared commitment to achieving at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts in the final reconciliation bill.

That was the floor for spending cuts the House provided its committees in its budget instructions for the reconciliation bill. The Senate had set a meager $4 billion floor to preserve maximum flexibility, given strict rules that risk derailing the bill if committees in the upper chamber fall short of the target.

The speaker said the two chambers are “directly aligned” on the $1.5 trillion target. Mr. Thune said many Republican senators believe that’s a minimum, although he was more cautious than Mr. Johnson when describing the alignment on $1.5 trillion as “our ambition in the Senate.”

“We’re certainly going to do everything we can to be as aggressive as possible to see that we are serious about the matter,” Mr. Thune said.

House fiscal hawks have said all week that they don’t trust the Senate and demanded that the upper chamber show them how it plans to achieve steep spending cuts.

“The Senate is prone to set up, to give us the shaft, like they’ve done for decades and decades,” Rep. Eric Burlison, Missouri Republican, said Wednesday. “Every time we get to this moment, it’s like Lucy with the football. They pull the football.”

After the vote, he cited “personal, verbal assurances” that were cemented on camera and in writing as a reason to believe the football would remain in place this time.

“We have a written document, a list of terms that the Senate and the White House agreed to, along with the leadership for a specific amount of cuts,” Mr. Burlison said.

Some others are not confident despite voting for the budget.

“I don’t trust most of the people up here,” said Rep. Elijah Crane, Arizona Republican. “I also know it’s a very complex system with a very diverse body, but I believe the swamp is going to do what the swamp is going to do at the end of the day.”

He said $1.5 trillion in cuts, if achieved, is “pretty decent” for breaking the Washington status quo, “even though I think in many ways it’s pathetic when you have a $2 trillion annual deficit.”

In addition to Mr. Thune’s agreement to the $1.5 trillion floor, fiscal hawks pointed to Mr. Johnson’s commitment to adhere to a House provision in the budget that would allow Republicans to dial the tax cuts up or down based on the corresponding spending cuts.

“The commitment was to not increase the deficit,” said Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican.

He argued that this would incentivize Senate Republicans, whose top reconciliation priority is making the president’s first-term tax cuts permanent, to adopt more cuts because otherwise, “it’s not going to pass the House.”

If the speaker breaks his commitment, Mr. Roy said, “it would be the death of reconciliation.”

Mr. Roy said the holdouts received key commitments from the White House to make significant cuts from Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and “the waste, fraud and abuse with Medicaid.”

Mr. Thune spoke publicly on the spending target after a private meeting Wednesday night with some of the holdouts, led by House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland, that failed to sway enough dissenters.

Mr. Johnson corralled the holdouts in a room off the House floor while holding an unrelated vote open for more than an hour to secure support for a budget vote Wednesday night, to no avail.

Negotiations dragged into the night. By morning, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thune’s joint press conference, along with the written commitments, helped seal the deal.

Mr. Johnson complimented Mr. Trump for his engagement but noted that “he didn’t have to call a single member” in the home stretch.

“He allowed me the space to do what I need to do, and then we got the votes together. We reaffirmed our commitments,” the speaker said. “It’s real.”

Mr. Massie said he sees no chance that House and Senate Republicans will agree on $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.

“You do not have a commitment unless it is in the base text of the bill,” he said, referring to the Senate’s binding budget instructions. “There is no real commitment.”

However, with the budget resolution adopted, Republicans can start working on real negotiations over spending cuts and other policies. The resolution gives House and Senate committees a May 9 deadline to report their pieces of the reconciliation bill.

Mr. Johnson had set an ambitious goal to have a completed reconciliation package on the president’s desk by Memorial Day, but he did not reiterate it after the delayed budget vote.

The speaker said 11 House committees would work through Congress’ two-week recess for Easter and Passover on their portions of the package, some of which were already drafted, and begin the markup process when lawmakers return.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, said lawmakers would work as quickly as possible. He noted that Mr. Trump is “not somebody that wants to wait around for months.”

“That’s why we want to get it done by this summer,” he said. “I’d love to see it on the president’s desk by the end of May.”

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said his chamber is looking to move quickly to provide urgently needed funding for defense, border security and immigration enforcement and raise the debt limit before the summer deadline.

“Time is of the essence,” he said.