Republicans’ next step on Trump agenda could take more than a month

Here’s the reality facing President Donald Trump’s tax and border agenda: Senate Republicans could take a month or more before even beginning to advance his party-line megabill dealing with tax cuts and national security.

Though the House approved a budget setting up Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” late last month, the Senate may not take it up until mid-April or beyond, according to interviews with multiple Republican senators and aides. Senators say they’re not slow-walking it — but they want a blueprint for what they’re ultimately hoping to achieve before moving forward.

And lots of tough decisions remain: whether expiring tax cuts need to be paid for, whether Republicans can try to lift the debt ceiling as part of the bill, how deep to cut spending and how to accommodate Trump’s proposed new tax breaks on tips, overtime and Social Security. Senate Republicans need 50 or more votes to take up the House’s budget, and they’ll only go to the floor when they know they have those votes secured.

That clearly hasn’t happened yet.

“We need to have the framework first. My suggestion is we take the House budget and we do a red-line strikeout and figure out what we need to get to 51 votes,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former party whip, told Semafor. “People are just sort of brainstorming about what they’d like to see in it. But there’s some practical constraints on that, which is: How do you get to 51?”

Trump wants quick action, of course, an outcome that the party’s slim House and Senate majorities aren’t quite prepared to accommodate. The president is calling for urgent border security funding, with his administration warning of an imminent funding crunch.

The Senate originally plotted to send him that border money first and then turn to tax. The House’s February breakthrough on its budget derailed that plan … for most senators, at least.

“We should do it now. In about three weeks they’re going to run out of money. If you do a year-long CR, there’s no money for the wall, there’s no money for additional bed space. And ICE gets cut,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Budget Committee chair.

Most other Republicans think that one huge bill is the only viable approach at this point. After the House and Senate agree on a budget vision, they’d then turn to the task of writing the legislation to enact its priorities. That will take even more time.

By delaying another round of budget votes until there’s more clarity on the still-unwritten tax-and-border bill, Senate Republicans can preserve the option of passing a border and defense bill without tax cuts.

They could still do that if Trump decides to shift gears and say “__ ’Hey, let’s get that Senate bill passed now and get it into place,” as Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., put it this week.