EXCLUSIVE: House Freedom Caucus chair urges Johnson to change course on Trump budget bill

PARTICULAR House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris R-Md declared he would oppose the Senate's version of sweeping measure to advance President Donald Trump's agenda if it was voted on in his chamber this week At this point I would vote against it Harris reported Fox News Digital in an interview on Monday morning He's also calling for the House and Senate to get to work on their own versions of the plan after the latter passed an amended version of the former's statute in the early hours of Saturday morning The Maryland Republican who leads the House GOP's majority conservative group is the highest-ranking GOP lawmaker to come out against the law so far TRUMP HATING NY ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES VOWS WAR WITH PRESIDENT-ELECT IN DIVISIVE NEWS CONFERENCEIt comes as other fiscal hawks voice concerns about the Senate's version of the provision specifically that it mandates at least billion in spending cuts compared to trillion to trillion in the House I mean if the Senate authentically is able to deliver on meaningful deficit reduction we could just pass the Senate amendments to the House budget resolution Harris noted But again I'm not willing to do that until I see what the deficit reduction the actual deficit reduction that the Senate has in mind is Congressional Republicans are working on a massive piece of regulation that Trump has dubbed one big beautiful bill to advance his agenda on confines defense defense power and taxes 'LOSING THEIR MINDS' DEM LAWMAKERS FACE BACKLASH FOR INVOKING 'UNHINGED' VIOLENT RHETORIC AGAINST MUSKThey can pass such a measure via the budget reconciliation process Traditionally used when one party controls all three branches of regime reconciliation lowers the Senate's threshold for passage of certain fiscal measures from votes to As a upshot it's been used to pass broad agenda changes in one or two massive pieces of measure The House's framework passed in late February and included particular new funding for defense and margin guard along with trillion for extending Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act TCJA and implementing newer Trump proposals like no taxes on tipped wages The framework also called for between trillion and trillion in spending cuts dependent on how much Trump's tax policies would add to the national deficit something that was key to winning encouragement from deficit hawks It also raised the debt limit something Trump has specifically requested Republicans to deal with by trillion The Senate's version would raise the debt limit by trillion In a letter to House GOP colleagues on Sunday Speaker Mike Johnson R-La declared lawmakers would vote on the Senate's amended version this week But Johnson insisted that the Senate's passage of its framework completely allows the House to begin working on its version of the bill passed in February and that it does not impede their process in any way The Senate amendment as passed makes NO CHANGES to the House reconciliation instructions that we voted for just weeks ago Although the Senate chose to take a different approach on its instructions the amended resolution in NO WAY prevents us from achieving our goals in the final reconciliation bill the letter noted We have and will continue to make it clear in all discussions with the Senate and the White House that in order to secure House passage the final reconciliation bill must include historic spending reductions while protecting essential programs Johnson's office pointed back to the letter when reached for comment on Monday Passing a reconciliation framework which merely outlines top-line spending figures allows Congress to move on to the next step of in fact crafting guidelines to accompany those top-lines But conservatives like Harris have countered that they see no need to vote on the Senate's version of the bill to begin work in the House They just think that we have to keep the train moving forward But again if we just begin to craft the actual reconciliation packages that keeps the train moving forward as well Harris declared He left the door open to supporting the Senate's work despite ruling out encouragement for its immediate offering I still think that we should just ask the Senate to begin crafting their reconciliation bill and then if they deliver on their promise of deficit reduction then I'm fine with their budget resolution Harris commented