Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he declined an invitation to speak with President Donald Trump on Tuesday because he didn’t think he could be persuaded to support the pending GOP budget framework.
House Republicans wary of supporting the Senate-approved budget plan met with Trump to discuss the matter, but Harris said he wouldn’t be among them, telling reporters that Trump should “spend time with people whose minds he might change.”
“There’s nothing that I can hear at the White House that I don’t understand about the situation,” Harris said, according to Politico.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said, “That sounds uncharacteristic of Andy Harris” and told reporters he had not personally heard that from the Marylander.
Harris said there are more than a dozen GOP holdouts — enough to stall the legislation in a chamber where the 220-213 Republican majority can afford to lose only three votes to pass a bill, assuming all members are present.
Many holdouts are concerned about modest spending cuts in the plan approved by the Senate on Saturday, with the House leadership’s pressure to back it.
“At this point, there are definitely more than a dozen,” Harris said of the holdouts, according to Politico. “Maybe the president can whittle that down, but he’s not going to whittle it down to four or three.”
House Republicans held a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning where fiscal conservatives suggested skipping a vote this week and have the House and Senate work on a compromise bill. But House leaders were not receptive, Politico reported, citing a person granted anonymity to describe the conversation.
The budget plan was tentatively scheduled to go to the House Rules Committee after the White House meeting, which was not on the president’s daily schedule, according to Politico. The meeting could be postponed if House leaders don’t make headway with the holdouts.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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