House Republicans on Thursday approved a budget resolution that aims to fulfill much of President Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda. 

Fiscal hawks in the House of Representatives have been warning repeatedly that any budget bills need to show reform through spending cuts if they are to win their support. On Thursday, they successfully negotiated $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, though accompanied by $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

The deal also raised the debt ceiling about another $4 trillion. As for the MAGA priorities of stopping the border crisis, House Republicans came up with $300 billion for border and defense spending increases. 

In terms of the budget process, Senate Republicans were largely waiting for the House to catch up. Last week, Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released his budget resolution. Graham’s proposal had money for a border wall, securing the southern border, and increasing the capacity of detention centers that hold illegal aliens caught inside the United States.

Graham’s budget also eliminated the tax on natural gas and opened up onshore and offshore leases for drilling. 

Republicans have to be careful when going about their tax cuts. Chief among the concerns is saddling the United States with further debt that could disproportionately hurt the poor and the young. Out-of-control deficits and debt could lead to even higher inflation rates and massive interest rate increases. Inflation is essentially a regressive tax on the poor because they have less financial leeway to absorb the increase in costs. Mortgage rate increases disproportionately hurt young people who tend to have less money on hand.

Richard Stern, The Heritage Foundation’s chief budget analyst, put it this way to The Daily Signal: “The deficits produce higher inflation rates and higher interest rates. Mortgage rates at a crushing 7%, and the 20% price spike for most families over the last four years, [both] results of reckless federal deficits and spending.”

There are also Republicans who would like to see more fiscal restraint in the future. “I believe restoring pre-COVID spending levels through budget reconciliation and the appropriations process is a critical goal in our effort to get our nation’s fiscal house back in order,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal.

“Spending cuts will happen. The budget resolution that we passed out of the House Budget Committee enables us to reach $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and potentially more than $2 trillion in spending cuts. Through negotiations, the House Freedom Caucus secured an accountability mechanism that ensures Republicans uphold our promise of delivering both tax cuts and spending cuts,” Clyde said, adding:

In short, both of these goals must be met. For every dollar that we cut in spending, there will be another dollar in tax cuts—just as for every dollar missed in spending cuts, there will be a dollar less in tax cuts.

This is a commonsense approach to achieving our mission of delivering on President Trump’s America First agenda in a fiscally responsible manner.

There is also incredible potential for government savings and reform. As Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal in a statement, “We can look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in mandatory spending programs that are on autopilot and have been growing at 5, 6, 7, 8% a year, and surely we can find some savings on those mandatory spending programs, just like most families and most businesses.”

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