Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is suggesting a second — possibly a third — tax and spending cuts bill amid headwinds in the Senate over President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful” megabill, Semafor reported Tuesday.
At issue is that a bloc of Senate Republicans are uneasy with the dearth of spending cuts in the funding bill passed in the House and are looking for significantly more reductions. Politico reported that Trump’s campaign promises of no tax on tips and overtime could get cut out of the bill in the Senate.
So Graham is looking for a “compromise on this bill,” then “we got two more to do,” he told Semafor.
“There’s some things that the president wants, like no tax on tips and overtime. All this may be hard to fit in completely. So let’s have as big a bill as the market will bear but realize that more is coming,” Graham told the outlet.
Graham and other Senate Republicans favored the two- or three-party line tax and cuts bill at the outset of the process, but that gave way to the one-bill preference of Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
But with Senate Republicans, including Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., hunting for more spending cuts, potentially putting major Trump provisions on the chopping block, Graham is concerned with trying to thread the needle in both chambers.
“It just becomes: How much can you put into the bill before you lose the votes?” Graham told Semafor. “We’re not going to get the bill through the Senate without more spending cuts. I think if you do too much, you’re going to lose the House, so there will be Round 2.”
A problem for Johnson, among myriad issues for other GOP senators, is that Trump’s promises of no taxes on tips and overtime is not a “pro-growth” strategy, Politico reported.
“They’re making a case to increase the labor supply,” Johnson told Politico. “I would just extend the current tax law.”
However, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson countered, “No tax on overtime and no tax on tips are presidential priorities that 80 million Americans voted for in November.”
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