Megabill casualties

Capitol agenda: The GOP’s latest megabill casualties

House Republicans will vote to ax some of their previous megabill proposals as the Senate’s “Byrd bath” looms.

Mia McCarthy

House Republicans will vote to make difficult changes to the GOP megabill Wednesday in an attempt to keep the bill on track in the Senate.

The House Rules Committee teed up a provision Tuesday night that would scrub the House-passed bill of problems the Senate parliamentarian flagged as threats to the measure’s filibuster-skirting power.

The proposals getting axed include:

— Cracking down on the fraud-plagued employee retention tax credit created during the pandemic. House Republicans were relying on this for $6.3 billion in savings to offset spending in the bill.

— $2 billion for Pentagon military intelligence programs and $500 million to develop missiles. Losing this particularly irked many House GOP lawmakers.

— Allowing mining in a protected wilderness area in the Midwest. The contentious provision would have reversed then-President Joe Biden’s move to protect the Boundary Waters area.

— Part of the policy ending increased food aid for households that also qualify for heating and cooling assistance. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) previously complained about this.

— Extending a policy requiring federal agencies to procure a certain amount of biofuels or bio-based products.

By cutting these items, the bill retains its ability to pass the Senate with a simple majority, rather than 60 votes. While Senate Republicans are still mulling their own tweaks to the bill and could seek to restore some of the measures now on the chopping block, these changes need to be fixed now before the Senate votes on it.

More policies could still get slashed. In the coming weeks, expect Senate Republicans to start getting their first “Byrd bath” rulings from the parliamentarian on additional GOP proposals under challenge from Democrats.

To help avoid a tough whip effort Wednesday, House GOP leaders are embedding the fixes in the procedural measure they’re using to set up debate on the $9.4 billion rescissions package — legislation that even the most conservative Republicans support. That won’t be the case when the bill comes back from the Senate in a few weeks, as leaders hope.