INTERVIEW: Confirmations and reconciliation: Markwayne Mullin dives in with the Washington Reporter
The Lowdown:
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) floats Senate budget “contingency plan” amid reconciliation talks.
Mullin told the Reporter that the House “missed their timeframe” on reconciliation.
Mullin calls Rep. Chip Roy’s (R., Texas) idea to raise taxes on corporations a “nonstarter.”
Roy fired back, saying Mullin “mischaracterizes” his “view that corporate taxes should be on the table as much as taxes on working families.”
The Senate continues to truck forward in the confirmation process to get President Donald Trump’s nominees across the finish line. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.), a close ally of the president and a key figure in House-Senate Republican relations, hopped on the phone with the Washington Reporter to talk about the ongoing confirmation process and the ever-daunting task of budget reconciliation.
Mullin told the Reporter the House “has a lot of work to do” and “may have some problems getting the budget passed.” The senator noted that Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R., La.) timeline in the House to pass the budget and move toward reconciliation, but said he thinks the House “missed their timeframe on this.”
“The Senate will be kind of forced to start working on an alternative package, a contingency plan,” Mullin said. “Obviously, we would love to deliver the one, big, beautiful bill that President Trump wants and that it seems like the House would like to do, but, ultimately, if they can’t get it done, then we’ve got to move.”
“And there’s part of it we can’t move because taxes originate in the House. We can’t do the taxes because that’s got to come out of Ways and Means,” Mullin continued. “And there’s some pretty interesting dynamics there. You’ve got people like [Rep.] Chip Roy, who wants to raise taxes on corporations to pay for SALT.”
“That’s a nonstarter. You’re not going to get that done,” he added. “And, so with just that nuance there, it’s difficult for the House to move one big package with taxes being tied up on it. So then the Senate may have to choose to do a separate package to deliver some wins and get things moving for the president, that can make sure we have the funding there for some of the programs when it comes to the border and some of these regulatory reform actions that need to take place.”
“I feel like that’s an option, but it’s not ideal. But if we have to, that’s an alternative package that we’ll go down,” Mullin added. The Oklahoma Republican also said he was open to repealing Joe Biden’s poorly-named Inflation Reduction Act.
“If we can see where it can save the American taxpayers money, which I think there was a lot of waste in it, and yet not hurt the economy, then absolutely,” Mullin said. “But I’d have to look at it.”
For his part, Roy told the Reporter that, while “Markwayne mischaracterizes my view that corporate taxes should be on the table as much as taxes on working families, he might explain how he intends to pay for subsidizing big tax blue states.”
Mullin also gave the Reporter the senatorial scoop on how the confirmation process is going. The senator said he’s feeling “good” overall about the confirmation process and that “if you look at it, we’re more than twice down the road than where we were this time in President Trump’s first term and Biden’s first term.” The Oklahoma Republican noted that, if you “look day-to-day, at the number of days, at this time in 2017 and in 2021, we only had six nominees confirmed.”
Mullin also told the Reporter that, as of the end of Monday, the Senate had surpassed both years in confirmations in the same time period. Mullin also said that he expects “four or five more” confirmations to go through next week, though the fight may be more “contentious.”
“But, we’re moving — for the Senate — at neck-break speed. That means we’re running about as fast as a turtle walks, but we’re still never taking a nap,” Mullin said. “We’re just constantly moving forward.”
Mullin noted the heavy slate of confirmation votes next week “if we get them on the calendar in time” but said the GOP’s “problem is working out the calendar date with the Democrats.”
“They find that they like to grandstand on one a week, and if we can get in agreement and do one tough one a week they want to grandstand on, that gives them their full 30 hours and the rest of the time they’ve been yielding time back to us,” Mullin said. “Because, otherwise if they didn’t, we’d have a hard time getting three or four done a week.”
“So I think our goal is to keep on the pace of averaging four a week and we should be able to keep that pace up,” Mullin said. The Oklahoma Republican predicted that the nominations Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard “will be party lines” but will get across the finish line.
“We may lose one or two, or maybe three, on those, but I feel like right now we are in very good shape to only lose one or two on those, if we even lose those,” Mullin said, noting that there are “still a couple of rogue ones that haven’t committed.”
“So we feel positive that every nominee right now that’s come out of committee will get confirmed,” the Oklahoma Republican said. “And that’s the hard ones. Really, once you get past Kash, Tulsi, and Bondi, everybody else should be fine.”
