Congress returns from recess ready to move on Trump's agenda

Washington — Congress returns Monday from a two-week recess with Republicans eyeing an ambitious schedule to move on the centerpiece legislation of President Trump's first-year agenda.

After both the House and Senate adopted a budget resolution that serves as a blueprint earlier this month, congressional committees are set to begin work this week on the massive plan key to implementing Mr. Trump's priorities on border security, defense, energy and taxes. The legislation aims to extend the 2017 tax cuts, along with authorizing additional tax cuts, while raising the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion. And GOP leaders have circled an ambitious goal to pass Mr. Trump's "one big, beautiful" bill by Memorial Day.

"What you'll see over the next four weeks is the pieces, the various components of that big bill rolling out of committees," House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News last week, adding that Republicans are "pushing it very aggressively on the schedule" to meet the Memorial Day deadline.

With instructions on how much to reduce or increase spending by, committees are beginning the mark-ups this week, facing a May 9 deadline to complete their work drafting legislation reconciling spending with the new budget goals, before the chambers can move forward on the broader package.

The committee work marks the next step in the budget reconciliation process, which allows Congress to bypass the 60-vote threshold typically required to advance a bill in the Senate and grants the party in power the ability to approve major legislation without working across the aisle. But finding the cuts, and getting the necessary Republican support, will be a heavy lift.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats spent the recess rallying their ranks against the key GOP budget plan and forthcoming legislation, after months of handwringing over how to respond to the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress.

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Cory Booker took to the Capitol steps for more than 12 hours for a sit-in protest against the Republican budget plan, warning of a moment of "moral urgency" when Congress returns. They were joined throughout the day by a slew of House and Senate Democrats eager to oppose the forthcoming GOP legislation.

"As we prepare to come back into session tomorrow, this is a time to choose. And we're either going to choose the side of the American people, or we're going to choose this cruel budget that Republicans are trying to jam down the throats of the American people," Jeffries said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined in a dear colleagues letter Sunday that soon Republicans are expected to take the next steps on their budget plan, claiming they intend to "cut taxes for billionaires while slashing Medicaid into oblivion." The New York Democrat urged that Democrats "must hammer away at the Republican agenda at every opportunity."

Democrats have sounded the alarm over possible cuts to Medicaid in the GOP plan, with the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees Medicaid instructed to find the biggest spending cuts — at least $880 billion over the next decade. And the Congressional Budget Office backed up the concerns in an analysis released last month, which found that the budget goals outlined in the House GOP plan could not be reached without reducing spending on the popular program, which provides government-sponsored health care for low-income Americans.

House Republican leadership has insisted that they will protect peoples' benefits, instead working to root out "fraud, waste and abuse" within the program. But the dispute over Medicaid has put some moderate Republicans in an awkward position, while sparking GOP disagreement over the scope of reshaping the program.

Republicans are also working to reconcile other lingering disagreements that could stall the process, like division over the depth of spending cuts, after the House and Senate adopted a resolution that sets low minimum floors in the Senate, at just $4 billion, while House committees must cut at least $1.5 trillion in spending. Senate Majority Leader John Thune assured skeptical House Republicans that the upper chamber is committed to finding more cuts earlier this month as they prepared to move on the budget resolution, but the chasm remains.

As congressional Republicans move forward, the timetable has appeared to slip in recent days, with an initial goal to have the entire package passed by both chambers and to the president's desk by Memorial Day that may become solely a deadline to get the legislation through the House. But the real deadline pressure could come with the Treasury Department's estimate of the "X-date," which marks when the government could run out of borrowing power and face an unprecedented default without action from Congress to address the debt limit.