House GOP struggles over budget blueprint signal bigger problems for Trump agenda

President Donald Trump’s ambitious agenda may be on the brink of a stinging setback in the House before it even gets started, offering a flashing warning sign about Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to deliver other key White House priorities this year.

President Donald Trump’s ambitious agenda may be on the brink of a stinging setback in the House before it even gets started, offering a flashing warning sign about Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to deliver other key White House priorities this year. The relentlessly upbeat Johnson acknowledged Tuesday that he may need to pull a critical vote to advance Trump’s agenda later that night, with at least three Republicans vowing to oppose it and a dozen more skeptical. Johnson has a clear math problem as he can only afford to lose one vote. “There may be a vote tonight, there may not be. Stay tuned,” Johnson said at a news conference on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, the first sign that leadership’s timing had begun to slip after top House Republicans projected confidence earlier in the day that a vote would indeed go forward that evening. Since then, he and his leadership team – with help from Trump – have been furiously trying to twist the arms of their own members for the evening vote. “It’s very complicated negotiations. A lot of numbers, a lot of factors, a lot of different opinions. But we will get there, as we always do,” Johnson said. Even as Johnson and his leadership team insist they’ll ultimately succeed in passing the sprawling budget resolution to unlock Trump’s legislative plans, it’s not clear how they’ll get there. And the outcome will have major consequences for the White House’s agenda and for Johnson’s own political survival as the party faces crushing deadlines ahead, including avoiding a government shutdown next month and the threat of an economic default later this spring. “I think the last few weeks are showing us how difficult it is to move any package through the House,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, a leadership ally, said after a tense hour-long meeting of the GOP conference on the fate of the budget plan. “This is a motley crew.”