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The Hill
5 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
Senate's ‘big, beautiful bill' faces House headwinds: ‘This is political stupidity'
The Senate GOP's version of the 'big, beautiful bill' is facing major headwinds in the House as a growing number of lawmakers stake opposition to the legislation, a troubling sign for Republican leaders as they try to fast-track the package full of President Trump's legislative priorities. The Senate Finance Committee on Monday released the final piece of text for the upper chamber's edition of the legislation. It changed key parts of the House's blueprint, including beefing up Medicaid cuts, softening the rollback of green energy tax credits and decreasing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — a troika of tweaks prompting significant pushback across the House GOP conference. 'My main takeaway for you guys is this bill, as the Senate has produced it, is definitely dead if it were to come over to the House in anything resembling its current form,' Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a vocal member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters on a press call. He said GOP leadership's self-imposed Independence Day deadline is 'a real question at this point.' 'The bill won't move through the House as it is,' the Texas Republican added. 'You have a significant problem with respect to deficits. You have a significant problem with respect to the Inflation Reduction Act. You still have a problem, in my opinion, on Medicaid, even though it maybe made a slight move in the right direction. And then there's a myriad other factors.' Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who switched from a Democrat to a Republican in 2020, also tore into the Senate's bill, taking issue with a provision that would decrease the amount of Medicaid funding states receive. 'This is political stupidity; it's political suicide. Why would you hurt these people?' Van Drew told The Hill. 'There are a lot of working poor, blue-collar people. There are people now — they were part of this new Republican Party, and we should make sure that they're safe not only for political reasons but also for the right thing to do.' 'I'm not voting for that. That's gotta be straightened out,' he added of the Senate's bill. 'I would be a no. I can't see myself voting for that.' The early opposition is a harrowing state of play for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who can only afford to lose three votes and muscle the legislation through his razor-thin majority, assuming full attendance and unanimous Democratic opposition. The Speaker had not commented on the Senate's text as of Tuesday evening. The Senate, to be sure, can still tweak its bill to win over support, but that would require significant changes that leaders are signaling they have no appetite for. On Medicaid, for example, some centrist House Republicans are griping about the upper chamber's decision to cap provider taxes at 3.5 percent by 2031 — a decrease from the current 6 percent — for states that expanded the social safety net program under the Affordable Care Act. The decrease would begin in 2027 and be phased out by 0.5 percent annually. Van Drew said he wants the provider tax to remain at 6 percent. He pointed to the House bill, which froze the provider tax at current rates while also implementing work requirements for nondisabled individuals. 'This will hurt people. That's how simple the formula is,' Van Drew said of the Senate's proposal. 'You don't want to hurt people that shouldn't be hurt. This will hurt people that shouldn't be hurt, because the hospitals are going to have to make cuts.' Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), however, backed the provision Tuesday — even as some moderates in his own ranks express concerns — describing the reform as a way to 'rebalance the program in a way that provides the right incentives to cover the people who are supposed to be covered by Medicaid.' 'But we continue to hear from our members specifically on components or pieces of the bill that they would like to see modified or changed or have concerns about, and we're working through that,' he added. 'But at the end, I mean, the goal is — as you all know — is to get 51 here in the United States Senate and 218 in the House, and so ultimately that's the math that I'm working with, that we're all working with. We want to get a bill out of the Senate, through the House and on the president's desk.' The Senate bill's rollback of green energy tax credits, meanwhile, has emerged as a pain point on the right flank. The upper chamber's legislation still takes a sledgehammer to many of the provisions enacted in the Democrats' inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but it appears to offer more flexibility. The legislation, for example, appears to eliminate a provision that would have required climate-friendly energy sources to begin construction within 60 days of the bill's enactment to qualify for the credits, which was considered one of the most stringent energy conditions in the bill. Instead, the Senate's measure requires projects, including solar panels and wind farms, to start construction by the end of this year to receive the full credit. Roy — who warned for weeks that he would not support the legislation if it watered down the elimination of green energy tax credits approved by Democrats in 2022 — slammed the changes. 'We have major backsliding on the Inflation Reduction Act 'green new scam' subsidies,' he told reporters on a press call. 'We're trying to just get even half at this point of the reductions the IRA locked in place, and now the Senate is pushing back on that. That's a real problem.' That position aligns with the statement members of the Freedom Caucus board released earlier this month, after the House approved the megabill, warning they would 'not accept' an attempt by the upper chamber to 'water down, strip out, or walk back the hard-fought spending reductions and IRA Green New Scam rollbacks achieved in this legislation.' Rounding out the House's three main areas of concern is the Senate's $10,000 SALT deduction cap, which is causing considerable consternation among moderate House Republicans from high-tax blue states. Those lawmakers — mainly members hailing from New York, New Jersey and California — engaged in painstaking negotiations with Johnson for months to land on a $40,000 deduction cap for individuals making $500,000 or less. Thune, for his part, told reporters Monday that the $10,000 cap is a 'marker' for negotiations with House Republicans, adding that the two camps will 'figure out a landing spot.' But House Republicans in the SALT Caucus are warning they will not accept any cap below the $40,000 level, threatening to tank the entire package. If SALT is not addressed by the end of the year, members have noted, the deduction cap would return to unlimited — where it was before the 2017 Trump tax cuts bill put the $10,000 cap in place — a reality they would be thrilled with. 'The $10,000 provision in the Senate bill is dead on arrival in the House,' Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told The Hill on Tuesday. '[It] does not acknowledge the hard work and compromise House members did for four months to get to $40,000 and the Senate has a choice now: It's either $40,000 or unlimited, because anything less than $40,000 will crash the bill and SALT will come back as unlimited next year.' He is offering his Senate colleagues an ultimatum: 'The ball is in the Senate's court, but the time to negotiate on SALT is over, the House has already done that. … It's now $40,000 or unlimited.'
The Hill
5 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
Senate, House GOP poised for clash on green energy tax credits
The Senate's more flexible approach to rolling back green energy subsidies is putting the upper chamber on a collision course with the conservative House Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus, a powerful right wing bloc, has said it will 'not accept' any changes that 'water down' the dramatic cuts to the tax credits passed by the House. And while draft legislation from the Senate this week does still deliver significant reductions in these subsidies, at least one key Freedom Caucus leader is already saying it's not good enough. 'Yeah, I will not vote for this,' wrote Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in a post on X, referring to the Senate bill's tax credit provisions. With the House version of the bill passing by just a one-vote margin, any further fractures in the lower chamber could jeopardize the bill's future. Both Senate and House moderates have argued that the House bill goes too far in its repeal of the Biden-era tax credits for climate-friendly energy sources. Despite the push from House moderates, Roy and his Freedom Caucus colleagues successfully pushed the bill rightward in the lower chamber. It's not entirely clear who would win out between the House conservatives and the Senate moderates who have themselves warned against a 'full scale' repeal of the credits. The issue is one of several that threatens to hold up passage of President Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.' GOP gulfs over Medicaid and federal tax deductions in areas with high state and local rates also persist. The House took a sledgehammer to the green energy tax credits, including by stating that only renewable projects that begin construction within 60 days of the bill's passage would remain eligible. The Senate version extends this timeline, allowing projects that begin construction this year to get full credit while projects that start construction next year would get 60 percent. It also axes House language that would have required energy projects to start producing electricity by the end of2028 to get the credit. Freedom Caucus member Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.), also raised concerns about the changes in a text to The Hill. He cited analysis from fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein, who said on X that basing the credit solely around a project's construction rather than energy production could mean that companies are able to claim the credit for years longer, including after President Trump's term is up. Brecheen said he's 'hopeful those in [the] Senate and the American people realize over 10 different times since 1992 …Congress promised to phase out the Production Tax Credit, and every time Congress has not kept [its] word,' referring to one of the tax credits for low-carbon energy sources. 'We have to ensure we do this while President Trump is president to ensure it happens. Any promise to end beyond his term as president will turn out to be a mirage,' he added. While conservative Republicans have sought as drastic as possible cuts to the incentives for climate-friendly energy sources, their more moderate counterparts have argued that doing so could be disruptive for U.S. companies that are trying to make investments in domestic energy production. Sen. Thom Tillis, who was part of the group that called for a 'targeted, pragmatic approach to the credits,' told E&E News this week that he was 'generally satisfied' with what the Senate put together. The language in the Senate bill is still expected to represent a massive cut to green subsidies, just not as dramatic a cut as in the House. 'The Senate Republican bill does almost 90 percent…as much damage as the House proposal did,' said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the architect of the tax credits Republicans are now seeking to dismantle, during a Tuesday webinar. 'Let's not get too serious about this new Senate bill being a kinder, gentler approach,' he said. 'Projects all over the country are being canceled.' Trade groups representing renewable energy companies also said that the legislation would still significantly harm the renewables sector. 'Despite modest improvements on several provisions, this legislation does not go far enough to remove the threat to one of the greatest economic success stories in American history. As drafted by the Senate Finance Committee, this proposal would pull the plug on homegrown solar energy and decimate the American manufacturing renaissance,' said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, in a written statement. —Mychael Schnell contributed.
Boston Globe
11-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Why rooftop solar could crash under the GOP tax bill
'This sets us back,' said Ben Airth, policy director for Freedom Forever, one of the country's largest residential solar installers. 'I've been in this industry 22 years and remember when it was only rich people, doomsday preppers and environmentalists installing solar panels on their roofs.' Advertisement One analysis by Ohm Analytics, an energy data firm, estimates that residential solar installations could fall by half next year if the House bill becomes law. Without the tax credits, it would take 17 years, on average, for homeowners to earn back their solar investments. A more pessimistic analysis by Morgan Stanley projects that rooftop solar demand could fall by 85 percent through 2030. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up While Republicans want to curb tax breaks for other renewable energy technologies like wind turbines and large-scale solar farms, the consequences for rooftop solar could be more severe. Rooftop solar can cost two to three times as much per unit of electricity as large solar arrays on farms or in deserts, and the residential industry is more vulnerable to shifts in subsidies. Advertisement The Senate is now writing its version of the domestic policy bill, and solar executives have descended on Washington to plead for a more gradual wind-down of the energy credits. They note that the solar industry employs roughly 300,000 workers and that rooftop systems can help homeowners cut their electric bills. Yet some conservative Republicans have made clear they oppose any restoration of tax breaks for renewable energy. 'Those God forsaken subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom,' Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said on the House floor last week. 'I'm not going to have it.' The uncertainty is upending an industry that was already struggling with tariffs and high interest rates. Last week, Solar Mosaic, which provided loans to homeowners to install rooftop panels, declared bankruptcy. On Monday, Sunnova Energy, one of the nation's largest rooftop solar companies, followed suit. Some experts say rooftop solar will eventually rebound, even without subsidies, if electricity prices keep rising around the country, which would make the economics of going solar more favorable. But the adjustment period is likely to be painful, with more bankruptcies and layoffs. 'We're not expecting residential solar to go away,' said Zoë Gaston, a principal analyst for residential solar at Wood MacKenzie, an energy research firm. 'But it will be smaller.' Major tax changes For two decades, Congress has offered tax breaks for people who put solar panels on their roofs. But Democrats supersized those subsidies in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into technologies meant to fight climate change. The law extended the residential solar credit, which allows homeowners to recoup 30 percent of the cost of a solar system they own, through 2032. It also expanded an investment tax credit for companies that build low-emissions sources of electricity like solar and batteries. Advertisement The latter change fueled a boom in solar leasing, in which homeowners don't have to pay the upfront cost of a rooftop solar system that can run $30,000 or more. Instead, a company owns the panels and keeps the tax credits. The homeowner leases the equipment from the company and ideally saves money through lower energy bills. More than 50 percent of home solar systems are now financed this way, and the rise of leasing has made rooftop solar more accessible to less-wealthy households, as well as to schools, hospitals and small businesses. The House Republican bill would terminate the residential solar tax credit by the end of 2025. And, in a last-minute change pushed by fiscal conservatives, solar leasing companies would be immediately ineligible for the investment tax credit. The House bill would also forbid companies from claiming the tax credits if they use components from China, which dominates solar supply chains. Because that provision is so broadly written, many companies say it would effectively make the credits unusable. 'Catastrophic is a fair way to describe the industry impact' of the House bill, said Gregg Felton, CEO of Altus Power, which develops solar projects on rooftops and parking lots. If Congress slashed support for renewable energy, experts said companies would continue investing in large-scale solar arrays, since even without subsidies those plants are often one of the cheapest ways to generate additional electrons. Rooftop solar, which is costlier and requires more labor, faces greater risks. Advertisement Kenny Pfannenstiel, the chief operating officer at Big Dog Solar, an Idaho-based solar installation company, said that rooftop solar has lately grown popular in newer markets like Montana and Idaho. 'We see a lot of interest from people who want to control their own energy future, or who worry about the grid being available when they need it,' Pfannenstiel said. Once the tax credits were expanded, he said, 'the economic argument for those customers to install solar and battery systems became a lot stronger.' If the credits vanished, some customers might still want panels, he said, but the market 'would shrink drastically.' The ripple effects could be significant. If solar leasing companies go bankrupt, customers could be left in the lurch, with no one left to service their panels. Thousands of installers and electricians would find themselves out of work. More than three dozen solar factories have opened in the United States in recent years, but some could shutter if demand slows. A debate over rooftop solar The fight over tax credits in Congress isn't the only challenge facing rooftop solar. While the technology remains popular with homeowners, some states have started pulling back support amid a barrage of criticism. Electric utilities and some analysts say that rooftop solar users raise costs for everyone else, because solar households pay less on their monthly utility bills but still rely on the broader grid for backup power. That shifts the cost of maintaining the grid to other households, which are often low-income. (Solar proponents disagree, saying that utilities ignore many benefits of rooftop panels, such as avoided transmission costs.) The fight has been especially fierce in California, the country's biggest rooftop solar market. In 2022, regulators slashed the compensation that new solar households could receive for the electricity they produce. In the months that followed, rooftop installations fell 85 percent statewide, straining installers, manufacturers and distributors. Advertisement Even now, some officials are looking to cut support further, including for existing homes. 'We have to reevaluate how our current solar subsidy programs impact Californians who may not be able to afford solar-panel systems,' said Lisa Calderon, a Democratic state lawmaker. The rise in interest rates has further squeezed the rooftop solar industry, by making it more expensive to borrow money to finance new installations. The Trump and Biden administrations also increased tariffs on solar components from China, which aids domestic manufacturers but makes panels more expensive. 'At some point our industry can and should be able to function without tax credits,' said Chris Hopper, co-founder of Aurora Solar, a software company that designs home solar systems. 'I do think we could get on board with a phase-down of these credits over an appropriate time period that gives us time to figure out how to find efficiencies and lower costs.' 'But an overnight change would be devastating,' Hopper said. 'It's just not possible to adapt that quickly.' This article originally appeared in .
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How the ‘Big Beautiful Bill' positions US energy to be more costly for consumers and the climate
When it comes to energy policy, the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' – the official name of a massive federal tax-cut and spending bill that House Republicans passed in May 2025 – risks raising Americans' energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. The 1,100-page bill would slash incentives for green technologies such as solar, wind, batteries, electric cars and heat pumps while subsidizing existing nuclear power plants and biofuels. That would leave the country and its people burning more fossil fuels despite strong popular and scientific support for a rapid shift to renewable energy. The bill may still be revised by the Senate before it moves to a final vote. But it is a picture of how President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans want to reshape U.S. energy policy. As an environmental engineering professor who studies ways to confront climate change, I think it is important to distinguish which technologies could rapidly cut emissions or are on the verge of becoming viable from those that do little to fight climate change. Unfortunately, the House bill favors the latter while nixing support for the former. Wind and solar power, often paired with batteries, are providing over 90% of the new electricity currently being added to the grid nationally and around the world. Geothermal power is undergoing technological breakthroughs. With natural gas turbines in short supply and long lead times to build other resources, renewables and batteries offer the fastest way to satisfy growing demand for power. However, the House bill rescinds billions of dollars that the Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022, devoted to boosting domestic manufacturing and deployments of renewable energy and batteries. It would terminate tax credits for manufacturing for the wind industry in 2028 and for solar and batteries in 2032. That would disrupt the boom in domestic manufacturing projects that was being stimulated by the Inflation Reduction Act. Deployments would be hit even harder. Wind, solar, geothermal and battery projects would need to commence construction within 60 days of passage of the bill to receive tax credits. In addition, the bill would deny tax credits to projects that use Chinese-made components. Financial analysts have called those provisions 'unworkable,' since some Chinese materials may be necessary even for projects built with as much domestic content as possible. Analysts warn that the House bill would cut new wind, solar and battery installations by 20% compared with the growth that had been expected without the bill. That's why BloombergNEF, an energy research firm, called the bill a 'nightmare scenario' for clean energy proponents. However, one person's nightmare may be another man's dream. 'We're constraining the hell out of wind and solar, which is good,' said Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican backed by the oil and gas industry. Cuts fall even harder on Americans who are trying to reduce their carbon footprints and energy costs. The bill repeals aid for home efficiency improvements such as heat pumps, efficient windows and energy audits. Homeowners would also lose tax credits for installing solar panels and batteries. For vehicles, the bill would not only repeal tax credits for electric cars, trucks and chargers, but it also would impose a federal $250 annual fee on vehicles, on top of fees that some states charge electric-car owners. The federal fee is more than the gas taxes paid by other drivers to fund highways and ignores air-quality and climate effects. Combined, the lost credits and increased fees could cut projected U.S. sales of electric vehicles by 40% in 2030, according to modeling by Jesse Jenkins of Princeton University. Meanwhile, the bill partially retains a tax credit for electricity from existing nuclear power plants. Those plants may not need the help: Electricity demand is surging, and companies like Meta are signing long-term deals for nuclear energy to power data centers. Nuclear plants are also paid to manage their radioactive waste, since the country lacks a permanent place to store it. For new nuclear plants, the bill would move up the deadline to 2028 to begin construction. That deadline is too soon for some new reactor designs and would rush the vetting of others. Nuclear safety regulators are awaiting a study from the National Academies on the weapons proliferation risks of the type of uranium fuel that some developers hope to use in newer designs. While cutting funding for electric vehicles, the bill would spend $45 billion to extend tax credits for biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. Food-based biofuels do little good for the climate because growing, harvesting and processing crops requires fertilizers, pesticides and fuel. The bill would allow forests to be cut to make room for crops because it directs agencies to ignore the impacts of biofuels on land use. The bill would end tax credits for hydrogen production. Without that support, companies will be unlikely to invest in the seven so-called 'hydrogen hubs' that were allocated a combined $8 billion under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021. Those hubs aim to attract $40 billion in private investments and create tens of thousands of jobs while developing cleaner ways to make hydrogen. The repealed tax credits would have subsidized hydrogen made emissions-free by using renewable or nuclear electricity to split water molecules. They also would have subsidized hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture, whose benefits are impaired by methane emissions from natural gas systems and incomplete carbon capture. However it's made, hydrogen is no panacea. As the world's smallest molecule, hydrogen is prone to leaking, which can pose safety challenges and indirectly warm the climate. And while hydrogen is essential for making fertilizers and potentially useful for making steel or aviation fuels, vehicles and heating are more efficiently powered by electricity than by hydrogen. Still, European governments and China are investing heavily in hydrogen production. The conservative Tax Foundation estimates that the House bill would cut the Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy tax credits by about half, saving the government $50 billion a year. But with fewer efficiency improvements, fewer electric vehicles and less clean power on the grid, Princeton's Jenkins projects American households would pay up to $415 more per year for energy by 2035 than if the bill's provisions were not enacted. If the bill's provisions make it into law, the extra fossil fuel-burning would leave annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 1 billion tons higher by then. No one expected former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act to escape unscathed with Republicans in the White House and dominating both houses of Congress. Still, the proposed cuts target the technologies Americans count on to protect the climate and save consumers money. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Daniel Cohan, Rice University Read more: The US energy market has its troubles, though it may not be a 'national emergency' Environmental protection laws still apply even under Trump's national energy emergency − here's why What Trump can do to reverse US climate policy − and what he probably can't change Daniel Cohan receives funding from the Carbon Hub at Rice University.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's conservative allies warn Congress faces critical 'test' with $9.4B spending cut proposal
Some of the White House's conservative House allies say they're interpreting the upcoming vote on President Donald Trump's $9.4 billion spending cut proposal as a "test" of what Congress can achieve in terms of rolling back federal funding. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said he would not speak for members of the Trump administration but added, "I do think it is a test." "And I think this is going to demonstrate whether Congress has the fortitude to do what they always say they'll do," Roy said. "Cut the minimal amount of spending – $9 billion, NPR, PBS, things you complain about for a long time, or are they going to go back into their parochial politics?" House GOP leaders unveiled legislation seeking to codify Trump's spending cut request, known as a rescissions package, on Friday. It's expected to get a House-wide vote sometime next week. Meet The Trump-picked Lawmakers Giving Speaker Johnson A Full House Gop Conference "The rescissions request sent to Congress by the Trump Administration takes the federal government in a new direction where we actually cut waste, fraud, and abuse and hold agencies accountable to the American people," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said in a statement introducing the bill. Read On The Fox News App The legislation would claw back funding that Congress already appropriated to PBS, NPR, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – cuts outlined by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year. And while several Republican leaders and officials have already said they expect to see more rescissions requests down the line, some people who spoke with Fox News Digital believe the White House is watching how Congress handles this first package before deciding on next steps. "You're dead right," Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital when asked if the rescissions package was a test. "I think that it's a test case – if we can't get that…then we're not serious about cutting the budget." A rescissions package only needs simple majorities in the House and Senate to pass. But Republicans in both chambers have perilously slim majorities that afford them few defections. Republicans are also racing the clock – a rescissions package has 45 days to be considered otherwise it is considered rejected and the funding reinstated. Mike Johnson, Donald Trump Get 'Big, 'Beautiful' Win As Budget Passes House Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, did not directly say whether he viewed the spending cuts as a test but dismissed any potential concerns. "This is very low-hanging fruit, and I don't anticipate any problems," Gooden told Fox News Digital. "I've heard a few comments in the media, but I don't think they're serious comments. If someone on the Republican side can make a case for PBS, but they won't take a tough vote against illegal immigration, then we've got a lot of problems." Paul Winfree, president and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), told Fox News Digital last week, "This first rescissions package from President Trump is a test as to whether Congress has the ability to deliver on his mandate by canceling wasteful spending through a filibuster-proof process." "If they can't then it's a signal for the president to turn up the dial with other tools at his disposal," Winfree, who served as Director of Budget Policy in the first Trump administration, said. Both Roy and Norman suggested a process known as "pocket rescissions" could be at least one backup plan – and one that Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought has floated himself. "Pocket rescissions" essentially would mean the White House introduces its spending cut proposal less than 45 days before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. In theory, it would run out the clock on those funds and allow them to expire whether Congress acted or not. Vought told reporters after meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday that he wanted to "see if it passes" but was "open" to further rescissions packages. "We want to send up general rescissions bills, to use the process if it's appropriate, to get them through the House and the Senate," Vought said. "We also have pocket rescissions, which you've begun to hear me talk a lot about, to be able to use the end of the fiscal year to send up a similar rescissions, and have the funds expire. So there's a lot of things that we're looking at." Still, some moderate Republicans may chafe at the conservative spending cuts. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., refused to comment on whether he'd support the legislation before seeing the details but alluded to some concerns. "Certainly I'm giving you a non-answer right now until I read the details," Bacon said. "It does bother me because I have a great rapport with Nebraska Public Radio and TV. I think they've been great to work with, and so that would be one I hope they don't put in." He also raised concerns about some specific USAID programs, including critical investments to fight Ebola and HIV in Africa. The legislation is expected to come before the House Rules Committee, the final gatekeeper before most legislation sees a House-wide vote, on Tuesday afternoon. It's separate from Trump's "one big, beautiful bill," a broad piece of legislation advancing the president's tax, energy, and immigration agenda through the budget reconciliation article source: Trump's conservative allies warn Congress faces critical 'test' with $9.4B spending cut proposal
