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Two top priorities for President Donald Trump — a gas tax holiday and funding for the new White House ballroom — are in serious jeopardy.
Republican lawmakers are publicly skeptical of the need for the gas tax holiday, which requires congressional approval. Republican leaders won’t be able to count on much support from Democrats — or even from some of their GOP colleagues, who see a gas tax holiday as depleting money for highway projects.
“I don’t see the momentum” for suspending the gas tax, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said.
The ballroom funding has also faced headwinds within Trump’s party, especially among moderates, and it might not even be able to pass the House, where purple-district members are skittish.
“As I understand it, it’s private donations,” said Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa. And that’s before the Senate parliamentarian weighs in.
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Some Republicans think the ballroom money will ultimately be stripped out of the final party-line immigration enforcement funding legislation under the strict rules for reconciliation bills. Some Republicans might even prefer that to a brutal floor vote that would put vulnerable incumbents in a tricky position.
“Many of the things that folks were hoping to have included, seems to me, my years of experience in going through this, you’re going to be running up against some real challenges,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told Semafor. She acknowledged that there could be some need for more security funding but “when it comes to the ballroom itself, the president made it very clear that taxpayer dollars weren’t going to go towards that — that that was going to be funded by donations.”
But even if the money clears the procedural hurdle, there “may be some changes made to satisfy members,” Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley told Semafor. “Everything’s up for discussion. But there’s no doubt we’ve got to have money in, to strengthen Secret Service.”
Some senators are discussing a smaller amount of money, for example.
Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday “we’ll see what we get” from the Senate when it comes to the ballroom. Secret Service Director Sean Curran has been meeting with House lawmakers to make the case for the security money.
Given the slim margins in the House and Senate, the party will need to be near-unified in order to pass the ballroom funding in the broader reconciliation package, given lack of support among Democrats. And a gas tax holiday would need 60 votes in the Senate and might need Democratic help in the House too.
Lankford said he opposed the holiday idea when Joe Biden was president and isn’t changing his tune now: “Eighteen cents is not the core of the problem, it’s much bigger than that and it’s very significant for our debt and deficit. … I don’t see it moving right now.”
“There are always concerns with a gas tax holiday because you have a potential to hurt the budgets for the roads that need to be repaired,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., the No. 3 House Democrat, told reporters.