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The priority for President-elect Trump and every member of the Republican majorities in the House and Senate has to be the new budget resolution and the reconciliation process it unlocks. The GOP Conferences on both sides of the Hill have to arrive in January prepared to go far with the budget resolution and to go fast.
The Tax Policy Center explains the budget-reconciliation process in succinct fashion:
“Reconciliation legislation is passed through an expedited process. First, Congress passes a budget resolution containing ‘reconciliation instructions’ telling congressional committees how much they need to change revenue and mandatory spending to conform to a new budget resolution. The committees’ responses are then bundled by the House and Senate budget committees into a single reconciliation bill for consideration in each chamber.”
The importance of the budget resolution to the success of President Trump’s second term cannot be overstated. The budget resolution should pass the House and Senate in late January or early February, and should contain the permanent extension of the Trump tax cuts of 2017, such revisions to those cuts as are needed such as the ban on taxes on tips and an increase in the SALT deduction. The budget resolution can also include as much policy on taxes and spending as the two GOP conferences can agree on, including massive hikes in defense spending; the approval, “notwithstanding any other bill or regulation” of the immediate construction to completion of the Wall, expansion of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and facilities; the expedited permitting of oil, gas and nuclear energy production; and the statutory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act as are need to launch a massive housing and apartment construction boom.
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(And as President-elect Trump said over the weekend, a solution for “The Dreamers” could be a part of this package which would be the very high profile gesture by 45-47 to the center of the country’s political spectrum.)
The budget resolution can be very long and very detailed. The rules provide only that reconciliation legislation either raise tax revenues or spend tax revenues. That’s neither a narrow gate nor a wide one. It’s a gate with specific dimensions: taxing and spending provisions only.
A sense of urgency has to possess the Republican conferences of the House and Senate for a very obvious reason. If the national economy isn’t booming by spring of 2026, the fall elections that year will be devastating for GOP incumbents in Congress, just as the consequences for President Trump would be dire if the GOP loses the House.
MORNING GLORY: ‘IS THE NEW BUDGET DONE YET?’
Did you note that impeachment enthusiast Congressman Jeremy Raskin (D-MD) successfully took over the position of ranking Democratic Member of the House Judiciary Committee this week? That was a big story that didn’t get much attention, what with Trump arriving in Paris and Assad bolting from Damascus.
What Raskin’s successful coup against his fellow Democrat Congressman Jerrold Nadler means is that if the House flips from “red” to “blue” in 22 months, a third impeachment of Trump will follow in 2027 and probably a fourth in 2028. New impeachments of the once and future president will be as baseless as both of the prior charades from Trump’s first term, but their coming will be inevitable because that is Jamie Raskin’s understanding of himself.
Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson. (Getty Images)
Raskin thinks of himself a “protector of democracy,” a major “player” in history’s march, instead of as the small cog in the wheel of the Beltway machine that he is. A future Judiciary Committee Chairman Raskin would find a way to push through more articles of impeachment against President Trump because for Raskin, as for much of the Manhattan-Beltway-Hollywood elite, their imaginary battle with Trump is all that matters to them. It is a weird worldview, but it is the operating system for much of the left and everyone afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Get Trump” is imprinted on their collective psyche’s instruction set.
Trump by contrast wants a legacy that shines as bright for the entire country as it does for himself, one as bright as the economy shone in the United States prior to COVID’s arrival in 2020. Trump wants America to boom again, to, wait for it, be “great again.”
To get that result, the returning president needs to keep the House and Senate under GOP control through to his retirement in January 2029.
Which means Trump needs the budget resolution in 2025 to move fast and go far. Every member of both GOP conferences has got to get a message from the President-elect: Whatever the specifics of the budget resolution that get hammered out in the intra-Party negotiations between now and early February, if you don’t vote for it, Trump will be recruiting your primary opponent in March.
This has got to be the message to every Republican: The country doesn’t have time for your personal agendas or antics. Make your priorities known to your leadership and lobby for them within your conference as hard as you can. But when the budget dust settles at the end of January, be prepared to vote “Aye” or to retire in 2026.
There aren’t many votes that Representatives and Senators cast that should be understood as “must have” votes —”party line” votes. There are a lot of different views in the GOP and it needs to be a “big tent” GOP. Republicans can and do differ on the specifics of every issue and, like the six originalists on the Supreme Court, they often get to the same result via different reasoning.
But the budget resolution is one of those “must have” votes. And it has to pass quickly so the businesses of the American economy can know what the rules of the road will be for the next many years. Stability in the tax code is the necessary if not sufficient first step in a second Trump boom. A secure border, a rebuilt military, a zealous commitment to the production of all kinds of energy and housing are also integral parts of the coming boom.
The Beltway has never been known for fast action. The standard operating procedure is to never do today what can be put off until tomorrow. Our entire Constitutional order is built on the premise of making action by the federal government difficult to command.
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But occasions for quick action do arise. The Congress has passed more than two dozen budget resolutions since the process was provided for in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. President Biden and Congressional Democrats availed themselves of the process in 2017 and 2018 when they hosed down their favored constituencies with cash. Such short-sighted excess purchased inflation and not much more.
Trump and the GOP Congressional leadership want much, much more. They can have it all if they focus and execute, resolving to take their big swing within weeks or Trump returning to the Oval Office.
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
