House GOP Leaders Completely Ignore Insane Debt Crisis In Major Funding Bill
House Republican leadership on Wednesday did not include budget cuts in a third budget reconciliation package as the U.S. national debt nears $40 trillion.
The reconciliation package would cost $95 billion, including $10 billion for the House Administration Committee to hand out grants to implement the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, $72 billion for the House Armed Services Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to address the Iran war and $12 billion to aid struggling farmers. It included no spending offsets, which would not address the $1.4 trillion deficit.
Many conservatives expressed concern about the package’s cost.
“$95 billion in new deficit spending, no offsets, and not one provision to lower the cost of living. American families are feeling the pain of rising costs. Their American dream is getting further out of reach. We must take their concerns seriously or our party will suffer the consequences,” Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace said.
Republican Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky argued Congress needed to prioritize lowering the deficit. “On any reconciliation, we ought to, one, pay for it; two, see how we can reduce the deficit,” Scott said. “I’m for less spending, not more. I think the debt is too big. I think the more we spend the bigger our debt gets. Less spending not more,” Paul said.
A House leadership aide claimed the only other option was working on a package with Democrats who would have wanted an even more expensive piece of legislation. “It’s not necessarily a choice between this and nothing. It’s a choice between this and, you know, theoretically an even larger un-offset spending package, but that said, I think all our members, even our biggest fiscal hawks, recognize the importance of providing this funding,” the leadership aide said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican leaders met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles at the White House Tuesday to discuss the package.
A group of House Budget Committee Republicans met with Johnson at Camp David on Sunday to discuss a framework for the package. Republican Indiana Rep. Erin Houchin, a member of the Budget Committee, complained about not being invited to the meeting and argued everyone from the committee should have been invited to attend. Houchin said on X she had “serious concerns” about the package’s framework. The White House, the House Budget Committee and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Fiscal-hawk conservatives demanded spending cuts in the one big, beautiful bill (OBBB) in 2025. Speaker Mike Johnson’s promise for spending cuts prompted the holdouts to support the package, which President Donald Trump signed into law in July 2025. Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington scheduled a Thursday markup of the measure to advance it out of the committee. The U.S. national debt exceeded the total amount of output from the entire economy as of March 31.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, plus interest on the debt, would permanently exceed federal tax revenue in 2027.
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