White House officials and congressional leaders on Tuesday began a hard sell of a $1.37 trillion budget deal to wary lawmakers in both parties, moving quickly to lock down support before votes expected to start as early as Thursday.
The agreement — hammered out during weeks of negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — will raise spending for the Pentagon and domestic programs by $320 billion while suspending the debt ceiling until at least July 31, 2021.
President Donald Trump praised the bipartisan deal on Twitter on Monday, although there was no specific statement from the president that he'd sign it if and when it comes to his desk and conservative groups and lawmakers were already lobbying to derail it.
Walking into a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, Mnuchin said the president "absolutely" supports the deal and predicted it would pass. Mnuchin plans to use the meeting to review the accord and press for its approval, according to two sources.
And Russ Vought, a longtime budget-slashing advocate turned acting Office of Management and Budget director, argued on Fox News that the deal was worth supporting because it prevented the "radical Democrats" from using the debt limit as a hostage. Vought also said he would "continue to propose cuts" to federal spending despite the lack of fiscal reforms in the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave his full-throated endorsement of the agreement on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning, saying he would be "proud" to support the deal because it leaves out "left-wing [policy] riders" and rebuilds the military after "years of neglect."
But the right was unbowed. Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus announced Tuesday they would oppose the measure.
"Jim Jordan and I have serious reservations about the budget agreement and will not be supporting it," Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows told POLITICO Playbook.
The group of two dozen House conservatives can't halt the deal from going to the floor. But they hope their grievances alone could rattle Trump and sway him to oppose the deal, just as they did last winter in a clash that led to a 35-day shutdown.
Outside conservative groups also immediately moved to pan the deal, with FreedomWorks calling it a "disgrace" after the GOP ran so hard against spending increases during Barack Obama's presidency.
"With this 'deal,' GOP 'leadership' has ceded its ground on fiscal responsibility, which for years was supposed to be a core tenet of the party," said Adam Brandon, FreedomWorks' president. "It's incredibly cynical to frame this deal as positive."
"We hope President Trump will reject the budget busting deal from Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Mnuchin," said Club for Growth President David McIntosh, adding that Mnuchin should read Trump's "Art of the Deal."
Backers of the deal are also trying to get Trump's ear.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) called the president and left him a message on Tuesday assuring his support for the deal to blunt conservative blowback.
"Just because I imagine not everybody's encouraging him," Cramer said.
GOP leaders are also adamant that the increase in domestic funding is not nearly as important as the huge Pentagon boost.
"Thanks to tough negotiating by the Trump administration, this deal delivers for the security of our nation," McConnell argued, complimenting Mnuchin, Vought and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. "Faced with our Democratic colleagues' reluctance, the administration took the high road. They did what needed to be done for our armed forces."
And McConnell, who hates shutdowns, argued that the deal would also ensure there are no drags on the "red-hot economy" that Trump loves to tout by getting rid of a potential debt crisis this fall and shrinking the odds of a government shutdown over the rest of Trump's first term.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is almost certain to see some defections on the left, argued the massive domestic spending infusion amounts to a jobs bill for the middle class and ends the threat of blunt budget cuts due to the 2011 Budget Control Act.
"The shadow of sequestration — the inability of the government to provide ladders so middle-class people can deal with the big forces pushing them around — will no longer hover over our work on the federal budget," Schumer said.
House members will not return to Washington until Tuesday night, but Pelosi is also already pushing hard for support from her Democratic rank-and-file.
Pelosi sent a letter to all Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday describing the deal as "bold, bipartisan and a victory for Democrats and the American people," the start of her own sales pitch to her caucus.
The California Democrat noted that the agreement contains a bigger boost for domestic spending than the Pentagon — roughly $10 billion more — and touted the permanent end of the Obama-era sequester cuts. Pelosi and Schumer have bragged that they are securing spending that's $107 billion higher than the levels when Trump took office.
"We will now move swiftly to bring this legislation to the Floor, so that it can be sent to the President's desk as soon as possible," Pelosi wrote.
The deal is expected to win wide support from across the House Democratic caucus on the floor this week, according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
The two-year agreement does come with conditions that has some rank-and-file Democrats fearing they could lose leverage in other upcoming funding fights.
Pelosi and Schumer have committed that they will not seek "poison pill" policy riders in government funding bills for the remainder of Trump's first term, potentially handcuffing Democrats' ability to block Trump from once again diverting funds to build his controversial border wall project between the United States and Mexico.
And some progressives, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), complained that an agreement to lift the debt ceiling through the summer of 2021 could tie the hands of a new Democratic president, if Trump is voted out of office next year.
"We also are losing our leverage by agreeing to a lifting of the debt ceiling for the remainder of this term but then in turn handcuffing a future progressive President in 2021," Khanna said in a statement Tuesday.
Dozens of House Republicans, too, are expected to support the measure on the floor to get the defense boost and assuming Trump supports it.
But whether House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can get a majority of his 197-member conference to back it is unclear, especially with opposition from hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus who are close to Trump.
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