Clock ticks on Trump and GOP’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill on taxes

As President Donald Trump’s tariffs roil the U.S. and global economies, lawmakers returned to Washington late Monday under new pressure to pass tax laws and raise the country’s borrowing limit to stave off a catastrophic debt default.

Some Republicans in Congress are pushing to enact tax cuts quickly before a potential recession, according to three GOP tax advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota are set to meet Tuesday to hash out a path forward on what Trump has called his “big, beautiful bill” on taxes, immigration, energy and defense.

But negotiations between the two chambers made little progress over last week’s congressional recess, lawmakers said — “As soon as we get that done, we’ll know how fast we can move,” Rep. Kevin Hern, an Oklahoma Republican, said Monday.

Major portions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire at the end of 2025. That law cut rates for virtually all taxpayers, though it concentrated the most benefits among wealthy individuals and corporations. If Congress does not act to renew the law, most individuals will see higher tax rates in 2026.

Trump also has called for massive new spending for national security and to deport undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly called for a “golden dome” continental missile defense system that experts say could cost trillions of dollars.

The president has pledged to end taxes on tips, overtime wages and Social Security benefits, policies that could drive the cost of the legislative package lawmakers are negotiating above $11 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Republicans hope to offset that cost by raising new revenue through energy leases and by changing social benefits programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps. Trump and Johnson have sworn off cutting benefits, but they appear open to changing how they are administered, such as reducing enrollment eligibility or cutting the federal government’s cost-sharing contribution to states.

The GOP is also considering employing an accounting maneuver that would write off the cost of extending the tax cuts, lowering the budgetary burden lawmakers would have to offset with new revenue or spending cuts.

Republicans are using a process called “budget reconciliation” to bundle the policies together and route them around a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

Johnson included a $4 trillion increase to the debt limit — the amount the federal government can borrow to pay its bills — as part of the House’s budget. But some in the Senate would rather pass a borrowing extension as a separate bill; lawmakers in the upper chamber have discussed pairing an increase with tens of billions of dollars in disaster assistance for California wildfire victims.

But that would be a tricky vote in the House: A number of Republicans in the lower chamber refuse to vote for debt limit legislation, and including it as part of a tax bill was Johnson’s play to keep GOP lawmakers on board with a broad package.

“That may be a last-minute call, based on how things are going,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican, said Monday.

The government will probably run out of room to avoid the borrowing cap sometime between July and October, depending in part on how tax receipts this spring come in, according to an estimate out Monday from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

That gives lawmakers a rough deadline. But to use the reconciliation process, the House and Senate must move in lockstep — and to start the week, they were far from coordinated.

Johnson and House leaders on Monday called for Thune to pass their budget through the upper chamber without amending it. Thune later in the day demurred about the sense of urgency: “At some point, the House is going to need us.”

But even some in Trump’s camp are urging the Senate to expedite its consideration of the House’s budget package — to offset Trump’s other economic policy decisions.

Conservative economic activists Steve Forbes and Stephen Moore, who is also an informal Trump economic adviser, wrote recently that Trump and the GOP should focus on the tax cuts to alleviate any discomfort caused by the president’s tariff policies.

“He has admitted that his tariff policy may cause ‘short term pain for long term gain.’ That’s true — because tariffs are taxes. They will raise prices,” the two wrote in the New York Post. “But given the wobbly economy, now is not the time to risk even short-term pain. The longer Congress delays in getting the tax cut done, the longer it will take to feel the economic upside. Investment is frozen right now due to the uncertainty.”

That sentiment is starting to take hold among some House Republicans, too. Malliotakis said she was encouraged by Trump’s actions on trade, but the unpredictability caused by tariffs could be holding down corporate investments.

Trump has promised a new set of global tariffs on April 2, an event he has called “Liberation Day.”

“In general, the private sector wants certainty. They want predictability,” Malliotakis said. “While so many things are up in the air — whether it’s tariffs or taxes, regulations — that makes it difficult. So we have to ensure, No. 1, that the tax code from 2017 does not expire. Second of all, we need to make sure that things that have already expired or are sunsetting … are renewed.”