House Speaker Mike Johnson met with Senate Republicans Wednesday to discuss Donald Trump’s ambitious agenda should he get elected and the GOP capture congressional majorities this November, reported the Hill.
“The principal focus in the lunch was if and when we have Republican majorities in the House and Senate that we should hit the ground running with a positive, pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda that focuses on tax reform and regulatory reform,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, after the meeting.
Johnson was “pretty clear that they want to try to go big, and that means more than just extending the tax cuts,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the news outlet.
Johnson pitched lawmakers on extending Trump-era tax cuts, spending cuts, and regulatory reforms, while other GOP lawmakers pitched a big increase in defense spending and cuts to mandatory government spending to reduce the projected federal deficit.
Cornyn reportedly pitched his colleagues on tackling mandatory spending, which includes entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and required interest spending on the federal debt.
“We’ve tried to deal with spending just looking at discretionary spending. Actually, discretionary spending has not jumped up nearly as much as mandatory,” he said.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told the Hill Republicans have “to prepare.”
“We’ve got to be able to think through what are the key issues that we could do,” he said. “We don’t know what the makeup [of government’s] going to be. The American people will decide that in November, but we should starting talking about it, starting with taxes.”
