Republican Revolt Reflects a Core Party Divide Over Spending and Debt

To a small but crucial group of hard-right House Republicans, the tax and spending cut package produced by their colleagues to deliver what President Trump calls the “big, beautiful bill” was nothing more than a homely cop-out.

The handful of lawmakers who blocked their own party’s sprawling domestic policy measure from advancing out of a key committee on Friday acted out of a fundamentally different view of federal spending and debt than the rest of the G.O.P. They are single-mindedly focused on slashing deficits by restructuring the government to dramatically scale back social programs, whatever the political consequences.

With their party in control of the House, Senate and White House, they view their fellow Republicans as timid, squandering a golden opportunity to turn the government’s finances around in a long overdue course correction. Instead, they see Republican leaders, catering to swing district members worried about their re-election, delivering a half-measure that, as far as the hard-liners are concerned, falls woefully short on cuts — and the ones it did make were gimmicky.

“I’m not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and one of the leading evangelists of deep spending cuts, said on Friday as he tore into his own party’s legislation. “This is the Budget Committee. We are supposed to do something to actually result in balanced budgets, but we’re not doing it.”

It remains to be seen whether the anti-deficit fundamentalists are really dug in against the legislation or shopping for concessions that could allow them to claim a partial victory against deficit spending and still ultimately fall in line behind Mr. Trump. They have earned a reputation both for revolting against their own party at crucial moments and for backing down before their intransigence actually kills a top Republican priority — often without achieving what they initially demanded.

But for a few days at least, the recalcitrance of Mr. Roy and his fellow deficit hawks, and their willingness to challenge a majority of their own party, has tied down the entire Republican legislative agenda.

The stance of Mr. Roy and others who blocked the legislation reflects a core disconnect between them and Mr. Trump, who does not share their aversion to debt and in fact has pledged not to pursue the kind of structural changes that would rein it in. But the divide predated this president.

For decades, Republicans in Congress have focused on cutting spending primarily as a way to offset the cost of large tax cuts, but have not been philosophically wedded to eliminating or substantially reducing deficits, nor willing to pay the political price for taking the action that would be necessary to do so. The few who insisted on balancing the budget and eliminating the debt were loud but lonely voices with little power to bring about that result.

These days the anti-deficit evangelists have amassed more power on Capitol Hill as their party has veered sharply to the right — and have more opportunities to wield it given the tiny Republican majorities that allow even a small bloc of dissenters to sink any bill. But they are still a distinct minority compared to Republican leaders and most of the rank and file.

Those lawmakers see tax cuts as the key to stimulating the economy — and winning elections — and are willing to swallow continued deficits to get them in place. The Senate Republican approach to dealing with this problem in the bill now under discussion has been to simply assert that renewing the 2017 tax cuts will not drive up deficits by even one dollar, though all projections are that they will add trillions to the national debt. From a purely political standpoint, the G.O.P. strategy is to deliver tax cuts that their constituents will feel while making spending cuts that they won’t.

That approach has resulted in real tension between the far and not-quite-as-far right, because the hard-liners still hold the view that deficits matter greatly, and that — as much as they love tax cuts — they can’t just shrug off the huge costs of their party’s legislation. Now, without the slightest prospect of any Democratic help on the bill, Republican leaders have no choice but to contend with them, because there is no hope of passing a bill if they defect.

That is a tricky job because spending cuts on the scale sought by the far right come with substantial political risk given the extent to which federal aid has reached into the lives of Americans, particularly with Medicaid becoming a source of health care for growing numbers of people. Republican leaders fear that surrendering too much to the deficit hawks will end up costing them the votes, and potentially also the seats, of swing-state colleagues who are the key to keeping the G.O.P. in power in Congress.

For his part, Mr. Trump, the self-proclaimed king of debt, seems mainly intent on getting a bill to sign that will allow him to proclaim victory no matter what the impact is on federal deficits. He has shown a real reluctance to being blamed for cuts that could hurt his voters. On Friday, he urged House Republicans to just get on with it.

“We don’t need “‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party,” the president said in a social media post. “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”

Anti-spending Republicans have long irritated their colleagues with their claims of fiscal purity and a condescending attitude that their fellow members of the G.O.P. just don’t have the political fortitude to do what is needed to put the nation on a healthier fiscal track. Other G.O.P. lawmakers note that it is much easier to be courageous in the deep-red districts that most of them represent.

As the Budget Committee considered the legislation Friday, other Republicans said they wished they could have done more to cut federal spending, but were willing to accept the political realities of the moment. They said they would back the legislation and its $1.5 trillion in cuts as a good first step toward fiscal stability and try to do more the next time.

“If we falter in taking this first step, we can’t get to the next one,” said Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, who accused his party colleagues opposing the bill of pursuing a “quixotic quest for perfection.”

Hours after the embarrassing setback, House leaders scheduled the Budget Committee to return late Sunday night for another try, suggesting they had found a way to mollify the conservatives and let everyone declare victory — or at least were confident they would over the weekend.

Top Republicans say they have no choice but to find a resolution. Passing legislation with deeper cuts might be risky, they say, but not passing legislation at all would be disastrous.

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