MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump's tax and spending bill is headed to the Senate after passing in the House by just one vote. It is estimated the bill will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt. How it fares in the Senate will offer insight into the dynamics at play in the Republican Party. For more on this, we're joined by Republican strategist and founding partner of Firehouse Strategies Alex Conant. Alex, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us on this Memorial Day.
ALEX CONANT: Yeah, good morning. Happy Memorial Day.
MARTIN: Same to you. So Senate Majority Leader John Thune can only afford to lose three Republican votes. Now, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin called the deficit growth in the bill, quote, "completely unacceptable." And he says he has enough colleagues to get more spending cuts. So is the bill in jeopardy?
CONANT: I would not say that the bill is in jeopardy in any way. The Senate is going to pass this bill, and I don't think anybody should be under any illusion otherwise. But there will be changes. And I think there's going to be a look at the deficit numbers. There's going to be a look at the Medicaid cuts. There's going to be a look at some of the clean energy tax credits that were cut. There's going to be a look at how pass-throughs are treated, you know, lots of smaller provisions that the House included.
The Senate is going to take its turn. They're going to put it through the committees. They're going to make changes to it. But then they're going to pass it, and the House will pass it. And it'll go to the president's desk, and it very well may do that before Speaker Johnson - or Speaker Thune's - or Leader Thune's July 4 deadline.
MARTIN: So, you know, there are similar dynamics in the House. Some members said the bill - you know, had also expressed concerns about the deficit. Others expressed concerns about the cuts to Medicaid on the CBO, estimates that this is going to, you know, drop - this is going to cause, like, millions of people to be dropped from the rolls. So at the end of the day, though, the objectors found a way to support the bill. I guess you're saying that you think the same dynamic is going to apply in the Senate.
CONANT: Look, the Republicans have to pass this bill for a couple of reasons. First off, they're not going to let the tax cuts that were passed in 2017 - they're all scheduled to expire at the end of this year. They're not going to let that happen. They've also tied this vote to increasing the debt limit, something that they have to do by August. This is President Trump's only real legislative priority. As you know, President Trump is wildly popular with Republicans, more importantly with Republican primary voters, so members of Congress in the Senate and the House are not going to defy the president and let these tax cuts expire.
So they're going to pass the bill. I do give Speaker Johnson a lot of credit for the negotiations that he managed inside the House with both the moderates, who cared about things like increasing the SALT limits, and the conservatives, as you pointed out, had real concerns about the deficit. But look, he was able to navigate that and pass it by his deadline and send a bill to Senator Thune that has a lot of momentum. And President Trump's political standing within the party just couldn't be higher at this moment.
MARTIN: So let me talk about the two issues, though, that we said that were concerns, at least expressed concerns, in the House and presumably in the Senate. OK, first, what the bill will add to the deficit. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, this is this nonprofit, nonpartisan group that is about educating the public on issues with fiscal policy impact. It estimates the bill will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt. This has been a longstanding traditional concern of conservatives and Republicans. Not important anymore?
CONANT: I think every Republican member of Congress is concerned about the deficit. And I've seen reports that we are projected to have 7% deficit - that 7% of our GDP is going to be deficit spending for the next several years. That's unsustainable, and I think Republicans are concerned about that. However, they do have to pass - they have to increase the debt limit. They have to, for both political and economic reasons, extend the tax cuts. They voted for a budget earlier this year that does increase the deficit. And the budget that they - the tax cuts that they passed last week and that the Senate is now going to be taking up fits within that budget.
So they're basically doing what they said that they were going to do. I think you'll hear a lot of grumbling about the deficit. I think you'll hear, you know, the need to do something about it. The Senate may take a look at, you know, some of the tax cuts and some of the other spending in the bill. But at the end of the day, I keep coming back to, like, the Senate is going to pass this legislation and send it to the president. They'll make changes, and some of those changes may reflect concerns about the deficit, but I don't think that's enough to stop the bill.
MARTIN: And we only have 20 seconds left. But those Medicaid cuts, I mean, the reality of it is that people will be dropped from the rolls under this bill if it's passed as it's envisioned. The Democrats say that they are going to, you know, give the Republicans no peace on this. Is that a problem, as briefly as you can?
CONANT: Yeah, I think they'll use it against them. But some of those cuts don't happen for a while, and we'll see who's in charge when they do.
MARTIN: That's Alex Conant. He's a Republican political strategist. Alex, thank you so much.
CONANT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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