David M. Drucker: The GOP's budget bill will pass in spite of itself

“Will it pass?” a Republican donor and occasional source from New York asked me, referring to the sweeping $2.5 trillion reconciliation package of tax cuts and fresh spending priorities working its way through Congress.

I’ve been getting that question a lot lately. Mostly, I hear from interested political observers who work in business or, like my donor-source, finance. Either way, they’re trying to game out future tax and regulatory policy and figure out the impact on the markets, their industry, their clients. So, what do I tell them? From the very beginning, my answer has been the same: “Eventually, it will pass.”

Predicting that President Donald Trump will get his Rose Garden signing ceremony might seem like an easy call. Last Thursday, the bill, aptly dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, cleared its first hurdle in the House of Representatives on a razor-thin, party-line vote of 215–214. But some political observers, Republican and otherwise, understandably remain doubtful about its prospects for final passage.

In the Senate, where the legislation heads next, there are Republicans — including Trump allies — who oppose key elements of the bill. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley doesn’t like the Medicaid cuts; Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson and Kentucky’s Rand Paul take issue with the trillions the package is projected to add to a $37 trillion national debt, which is already increasing the price of U.S. bonds, and therefore federal borrowing costs.

Changes made to accommodate these and other Republican senators could imperil the bill’s passage. In other words, that Rose Garden signing ceremony is hardly a fait accompli. Except it is — and not simply because, as some GOP lobbyists in Washington rightly emphasize, Trump is influential with congressional Republicans. Of course, the president matters. But there are two equally important factors at play.

First, and ironically, the Republican Party’s small House and Senate majorities are helpful, because they act like a forcing mechanism. With a House majority that rests on barely a handful of seats and a Senate majority of four (including Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote), no faction of the party can escape responsibility should the One Big Beautiful Bill Act fail. That includes blue-state moderates leveraging their support for an increase in the federal deduction for state and local taxes (SALT); that includes conservatives leveraging their support for steeper spending cuts; that includes others who might condition their support on protecting Medicaid.

“Every member has a responsibility for the agenda, and so they’re easier to keep together,” a Republican lobbyist and former congressional aide told me. “With larger majorities, everyone feels they have the agency to stand up for what they want.”

Indeed, that’s what happened under President Barack Obama after Republicans won a 49-seat House majority in the 2010 midterm elections. The various GOP factions were constantly at odds, making consensus, and therefore legislative achievement, elusive. This phenomenon also reared its head during the first Trump administration and is why, for instance, Republicans failed multiple times to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

Second, there’s the matter of the 2026 midterm elections.

Congressional Republicans aren’t really doing much beyond the reconciliation package. Should the legislation collapse, they risk going to the voters empty-handed, asking for reelection in a contest that historically costs the party that controls the White House both seats and power. That Republicans don’t have a menu of other achievements to fall back on creates a political incentive to find a way to get to “yes” on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

A veteran Republican political operative I spoke with agreed but explained the consequences of failure in more detail.

Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation legislation must meet certain conditions but is not subject to a filibuster in the Senate, where the current Republican advantage of 53 seats is seven shy of a 60-seat supermajority. To avoid having to horse-trade with the Democrats to enact that which cannot be accomplished via executive order, Trump and congressional Republicans have poured all their priorities — everything the president campaigned on last year — into this one massive package.

Included are extensions of expiring tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term; new proposals to eliminate income taxes on tips and overtime pay; a new tax break for seniors; and new work requirements for Medicaid recipients. And that’s just a small sampling of several proposed changes to the tax code and social safety set. Critically but sometimes overlooked, the legislation would also provide major funding for border security, including a wall, personnel and surveillance technology.

Accordingly, derailing reconciliation would jeopardize the entirety of Trump’s domestic agenda, and that of congressional Republicans. Their only other option would be negotiating with the Democrats, which grassroots Republicans would view as tantamount to complete failure. “If reconciliation doesn’t get done, we’re all f---ed,” the Republican political operative told me. “I can’t think of a bigger gift we can give [the Democrats] going into 2026.”

“The concessions that the Democrats will demand will be steep and catastrophic,” this Republican added. “They will mean large parts of the Republican coalition that elected President Trump and gave us majorities in the House and Senate will stay home next year because we can’t get our act together.”

There’s one other measure included in the reconciliation bill that’s rather significant: an increase in the debt ceiling.

Why would Trump and the Republicans take sole ownership of hiking the statutory borrowing limit, a vote they usually loathe, rather than force Democrats to share in this unpopular piece of lawmaking? Because they didn’t want to give up all or part of whatever Democrats were likely to ask for in exchange. This unusual decision reminds me of another fact of life in today’s Republican Party. There’s no real desire to address the ballooning federal debt.

Republicans say otherwise, regularly and vocally. Some are to be believed. But this isn’t the bill you write, and agree to support, if that’s the case.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David M. Drucker is columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of "In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP."