WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Congressional Republicans emerged from a five-hour meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday without having reached an deal on how to extend his sweeping tax cuts, though senior lawmakers said they believed they were close to agreement.
Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, have spent weeks trying to agree on a plan to cover the cost of extending the tax cuts — which nonpartisan analysts say could add another $4 trillion to the U.S.’s existing $36 trillion in debt over the next decade.
“We worked out the framework for what we believe will be the path forward. We’re going to meet again tonight to finish up some final details,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at the Capitol.
Republicans are trying to use a legislative maneuver to bypass the opposition of Senate Democrats, which will require near unanimity that has often eluded their fractious House caucus over the past two years.
Johnson has been juggling demands of hardline Republicans who want deep spending cuts and party moderates concerned about how such cuts might affect public services in their districts.
In their past two years in the majority, House Republicans have repeatedly turned to Democrats to secure the votes needed to pass funding measures. In the face of Trump’s aggressive moves to remake the government since taking office, top Democrats have warned they do not plan to help Republicans this time around.
Republican Representative Chip Roy, one of the party’s hardliners who attended the White House meeting, said that he was pushing for a deal that would reduce the federal government’s budget deficit, which topped $1.8 trillion last year.
Earlier, as the meeting was ongoing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump laid out his tax priorities that included extending the 2017 cuts, eliminating taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay, adjusting the federal deduction for state and local taxes, eliminating tax breaks for billionaire sports team owners, closing the carried interest tax loophole and cutting taxes on products made in America.
“We made serious progress and have narrowed the gap to where we’re very close to get ready to bring this to Budget Committee,” No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise told reporters at the Capitol after the meeting broke up.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan, Bo Erickson and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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