Scalise Talks Reconciliation Timeline

Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) appeared on Fox Business Network's Kudlow to discuss the timeline and path forward for House Republicans to put budget reconciliation on President Trump’s desk. Leader Scalise outlined his work with committee chairs to ensure Republicans remain unified and move quickly to lift the financial burdens left on hard-working families from the Biden-Harris administration. Additionally, Leader Scalise highlighted how powerful tax reform, strong energy policy, and a secure border are only possible through an aggressive approach to budget reconciliation.
 
On Pete Hegseth’s commitment to reform the Department of Defense:

“Yeah, great being back with you, Larry. I thought Pete did a really good job. You could see there are some people that are just trying to take their cheap shots. I think people are fed up with that approach. He really showed why President Trump picked him. He talked about how you only had a few generals that won World War II. We've got over 40 generals today. It's very top-heavy at the Pentagon. He wants to rightsize it. He wants to go in and focus on the warfighter, on our men and women in uniform or on the front lines, not all the big bureaucracy at the Pentagon. I know some people will be upset about that, but frankly, most people across the country are hungry for those kind of reforms that Pete is going to usher in. I thought he handled himself well.”

On House Republicans’ reconciliation plans: 

“That's right, Larry. We talked about this during the campaign. We said we're not going to wait until November 5th. And gee wiz I hope we win the House, Senate, and White House, and then we'll figure out what to do. We had already started working months ago. I met with President Trump months ago. I've been meeting with committee chairs, and we laid out what we would do, one big, beautiful bill. But ultimately, what's in that bill is what matters to the country, and that is getting real tax reform, making sure that we don't have any tax increases. That's a big place to start. Getting energy policy right, opening up more American energy to lower costs, lower energy costs, lower food costs. Get border security is going to be a part of that. Getting into all these crazy rules and regulations. How do you do it? You do it through budget reconciliation. 

“I started early. We had meetings with our membership. A large bulk of our members in this new class have never been through budget reconciliation. Even though you and I were there in 2017, it doesn't seem that long ago. For a lot of our members, they weren't here as part of that process. So we did an education process the last few weeks. We've had great participation there. But then you've got to put together a budget. Chairman Jodey Arrington and I started meeting with individual committee chairs. That process started this week earlier, where we're literally sitting down with – We only had two committees that were involved in this last time in 2017. Produced a great bill, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but it was just Ways and Means [Committee] and Natural Resources [Committee]. This time we're going to have at least 8-10 committees involved, Larry. That's a lot of different members, a lot of different committees that are going to be working. We have to do the budget first. We've said by February, we'll have that done. That means March. The month of March, you just go draw it up on your calendar, you're going to see 8-10 committees in Congress working feverishly to find waste, fraud, and abuse to identify real savings. I'm talking not tens, I'm talking hundreds of billions of dollars of savings from some of these committees where they're going to be able to put real reforms in place. Then we can do good energy policy. All of those things are part of what budget reconciliation is to get you the budget savings to then go and also put in place these tax cuts so that we don't have any of the Trump tax cuts from 2017 come back and hurt our economy.

“Then, of course, President Trump wanted to go further. During the campaign, you heard him say, no tax on tips. We're building that into our model, Larry. We're doing a lot of things that are going to get great economic benefit to the hard-working families who are struggling out there under the weight of this failed Biden economy. Let's turn it around. Let's get America moving again. We have a bold agenda because people don't want to wait. Let's get this thing moving quickly.”

On prioritizing working class Americans by unifying around Trump tax policy:

“It will happen, and it'll happen quickly. We saw with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, unfortunately, because Congress and the President were not on the same page in 2017, it took us a year to get that bill signed into law. We lost invaluable time. And by the way, the economy staggered and just shrugged along until we finally got that bill passed. Then we saw incredible economic output. We saw great wage growth. Families started seeing more money in their pockets, which really matters to them.

“This time around, we're way ahead of that curve. We are all on the same page. We've been working on this for months. The committees, there's limits on budget reconciliation, so it's not like you could just snap a finger, 'Hey, let's take H.R. 1 and do H.R. 1.' There's some things in H.R. 1 that don't fit under the limitations of budget reconciliation. But the things that do, we want to put those in the bill. Same thing with border policy. The same thing, by the way, with so many other of the committees that weren't involved last time that will be – work requirements. Some of the things that have been needing to happen to get real efficiency out of government and savings in the tune of tens and hundreds of billions of dollars. People are fed up throwing their money down trash cans and watching the government pay people not to work, watching the government do all these ridiculous things. And they said why don't we fix it? A lot of that you're going to start seeing fixed in this great budget bill. And again, March, the committees will do the work. By April, we'll have it passed through the House.”

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