WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Congressional Republicans emerged from a five-hour meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday without a deal on how to extend his sweeping tax cuts, though senior lawmakers said they believed they were close to agreement.
Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, have spent weeks trying to agree on a plan to cover the cost of extending the tax cuts – which nonpartisan analysts say could add another $4 trillion to the U.S.’s existing $36 trillion in debt over the next decade.
“We worked out the framework for what we believe will be the path forward. We’re going to meet again tonight to finish up some final details,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. “I think we’ll be able to make some announcement probably by tomorrow.”
Republicans are trying to use a legislative maneuver to bypass the opposition of Senate Democrats, which will require near unanimity that has often eluded their fractious House caucus over the past two years.
Johnson has been juggling demands of hardline Republicans who want deep spending cuts and party moderates concerned about how such cuts might affect public services in their districts.
The longer it takes them to get moving on Trump’s agenda, the closer Congress edges toward two crucial deadlines: A March 14 deadline to keep the federal government operating and a yet-to-be-determined midyear time limit to raise the federal debt ceiling or risk a disastrous default.
In their past two years in the majority, House Republicans have repeatedly turned to Democrats to secure the votes needed to pass funding measures. In the face of Trump’s aggressive moves to remake the government since taking office, top Democrats have warned they do not plan to help Republicans this time around.
Republican Representative Chip Roy, one of the party’s hardliners who attended the White House meeting, said he was pushing for a deal that would reduce the federal government’s budget deficit, which topped $1.8 trillion last year.
“That’s an important line in the sand for a lot of us,” Roy told reporters after the discussion.
“What matters is the total package, adding up what we expect to occur based on all of the variables – tax policy, regulatory policies, all those things – what kind of cuts do we achieve, and then what does that do to the deficit? That’s what’s driving my consideration.”
With a 218-215 majority, House Republicans can afford to lose the support of no more than one of their members to pass legislation that Democrats unite in opposing.
Earlier, as the meeting was ongoing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump laid out his tax priorities.
Measures included extending the 2017 cuts, eliminating taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay, adjusting the federal deduction for state and local taxes, eliminating tax breaks for billionaire sports team owners, closing the carried interest tax loophole and cutting taxes on products made in America.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan, Bo Erickson and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Lincoln Feast.)
