Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) to discuss the progress made at the House Republican Issues Conference. Leader Scalise outlined how reconciliation is the first step in fulfilling the mandate American voters gave to President Trump and called on the conference to remain unified throughout the process.
On a unified Republican government:
“If you think about the last month that we have started unified government, first with the House and Senate, starting off both in Republican hands, and then with President Trump coming in after an amazing week of inauguration ceremonies, and then going to work right away. Day one, President Trump had the leadership of the House and Senate at the White House to talk business, how to get to work, delivering results for the American people. This week has been no different. As Lisa [McClain] talked about, a record number of members participating. You could see that on full display when President Trump spoke to our conference on Monday night. Multiple standing applauses and just the message that President Trump delivered, just reminding everybody what the campaign was all about and now how it is our time to go and deliver for those families who have been struggling under four years of failed Biden-Harris policies and how we can turn that around.”
On budget reconciliation discussions:
“Of course, budget reconciliation is such a powerful tool to start that process of getting this country back on track. There’s been a lot of conversations the last two days, and we’ll continue that conversation today amongst our members about how to get there. Budget reconciliation is never easy. The last time we did this as Republicans with President Trump in the White House, you can go back and look at the votes. When we moved the budget, the budget is the starting point for budget reconciliation, the budget resolution got over 20 ‘no’ votes on the Republican side. Still passed because we had a large margin. I don’t know if you all know this, but we have a very small margin now. It’s going to be that way the entire way through. Might be three, might be two, might be five. But at the end of the day, and this was the message J.D. Vance reiterated to us yesterday, we stay unified, we can get anything done. We have to hash out our differences, and that’s what we’re doing.
“We had meetings yesterday where committee chairman that are going to be involved in the budget reconciliation process. Of course, you start with the budget resolution to give the targets the starting points to the committees. But there will be 11 committees involved in the actual budget reconciliation process. A number of those committee chairs had sessions where they laid out the details. These are the things we’re going to work on. These are the savings that we’re going to achieve. This is what we’re going to do to secure America’s border working with President Trump. This is how we’re going to solve big problems for the country, reduce inflation, ensure there’s no tax increase on American families who surely don’t want to see that devastate their pocketbooks. We laid that out, and we’ve been continuing to have an honest discussion about the differences within our conference, and that’s how we are going to come together to ultimately pass historic legislation for our country to kick off what’s going to be two years of successful achievements for the American people who gave us this mandate to govern.”