The Republican Study Committee convened a meeting Monday evening with CBO Director Phillip Swagel and Tom Barthold, chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation, to discuss the process for estimating program costs and savings as part of a possible third budget reconciliation bill, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the private gathering.
RSC Chair August Pfluger of Texas, as well Budget Chair Jodey Arrington of Texas and House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman of Alabama, were at the meeting. Reps. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania and Gary Palmer of Alabama were also in attendance, according to one of the people.
“We had a dialogue and talked about their methodologies on the Big, Beautiful Bill,” Westerman said leaving the meeting — referring to last summer’s tax and spending megabill — of conversations with Swagel and Barthold. “I think it’s good to have feedback like that, and have them explain themselves, and hopefully correct, so they can make better scores on the next reconciliation package.”
Plunger’s group has been laying the groundwork for a sweeping partisan policy package since last year, and laid out a menu of policy options back in January designed to reduce costs of housing, health care and energy. He and others are pushing an aggressive timeline for Congress to pass such legislation before the August recess.
House Republicans are now discussing several components of another party-line policy package to follow up on last summer’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” and the immigration enforcement measure that could be cleared for President Donald Trump’s signature as soon as Tuesday night.
They are aiming to center a third party-line reconciliation bill around affordability, and will also be seeking to root out alleged fraud in social programs that conservatives claim could amount to tens of billions of dollars in savings for the federal government.
Provisions currently under consideration, according to three other people, include cracking down on “fraud” in Medicaid, Medicare and other social programs; affordable housing initiatives; funding for the military and the ongoing conflict in Iran; an overhaul of federal energy permitting laws; and potentially a suite of changes to the tax code like indexing capital gains on homes.
Republicans are counting on recouping cost savings from identifying and eliminating fraud in safety net programs to pay for Iran war funding, but many GOP lawmakers are keenly aware that CBO isn’t likely to find savings of that desired magnitude. Speaker Mike Johnson also raised eyebrows Monday when he told a local radio station that Republicans have plans to adjust and fix spending in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security “next year.”
Representatives from the Heritage Foundation, the Foundation for Government Accountability and Fiscal Lab also participated in the Monday meeting with Swagel and Barthold, according to two people granted anonymity to describe attendance.
House GOP leaders and members of the House Republican elected leadership group also privately talked through ideas for another party-line bill during a closed-door meeting in Johnson’s office Monday, according to two other people with direct knowledge of the matter.
But Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who represents a competitive district and heads the Republican Governance Group, raised concerns about specific pieces of the emerging plan — especially how deeply Republicans can dig into health care and other social programs for “fraud” spending cuts without running afoul of voters in an election year.
Republicans involved in the talks say efforts to include fraud-related pay-fors could be compromised by vulnerable incumbents and centrists ruling out specific ideas. Some moderates have identified roughly $40 to $50 million in fraud cuts — a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars needed to pay for military operations in the Middle East alone.
