House Republicans passed a sweeping new budget plan but disagree on spending cuts. A group of civil servants on Elon Musk's DOGE team resigned, and egg farmers on the front lines of the latest bird flu outbreaks say they are losing the battle with the disease.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jason Breslow, Padmananda Rama, Carrie Feibel, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
House Republicans barely passed a budget plan making room for tax cuts and cuts to programs like Medicaid.
Chapter 2: How are House Republicans approaching the new budget plan?
Some Republicans hope to avoid the spending cuts later, and Democrats all voted no. So how do they work out the details? I'm Laila Fawzi.
That's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. The president holds a cabinet meeting today and will bring along an aide. The White House insists Elon Musk is not in charge of anything. And some departments ignored his most recent order. So who is making decisions?
Also, egg farmers say they're losing the battle against bird flu.
Chapter 3: What challenges are egg farmers facing with the bird flu?
The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just, I mean, you can't imagine.
Why is the outbreak so hard to contain? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
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House Republicans last night began a long process of trying to reshape the government to their liking.
Republicans passed a budget plan without a single vote to spare. Speaker Mike Johnson had a problem with some lawmakers reluctant to sign on until they switched at the last moment.
We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the American First agenda. We're going to deliver all of it, not just parts of it. And this was the first step in that process.
Now, the spending cuts in this budget blueprint are different from the ones announced so far by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. For one thing, the cuts are big. For another, they would be legal, assuming Congress follows through on the rest of a very long process.
NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales has covered that process in the past, is covering it once again. Good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, so I'm thinking this through. Democrats all voted no, said they were just gross spending cuts. Some Republicans were worried about this, also worried about too much borrowing, they said, still. So what's the final package say?
So lots of sweeping changes if Republicans can get to the finish line with the final product. But the framework that was passed last night spills out plans for new immigration, defense, energy and tax policy. And there's a lot of big numbers here. For one, it calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. That's tied to an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that are expiring at the end of the year.
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Chapter 4: How is Elon Musk's involvement affecting government operations?
Chapter 5: What are the political dynamics surrounding the budget plan?
Republicans passed a budget plan without a single vote to spare. Speaker Mike Johnson had a problem with some lawmakers reluctant to sign on until they switched at the last moment.
We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the American First agenda. We're going to deliver all of it, not just parts of it. And this was the first step in that process.
Now, the spending cuts in this budget blueprint are different from the ones announced so far by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. For one thing, the cuts are big. For another, they would be legal, assuming Congress follows through on the rest of a very long process.
NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales has covered that process in the past, is covering it once again. Good morning. Good morning, Steve. Okay, so I'm thinking this through. Democrats all voted no, said they were just gross spending cuts. Some Republicans were worried about this, also worried about too much borrowing, they said, still. So what's the final package say?
So lots of sweeping changes if Republicans can get to the finish line with the final product. But the framework that was passed last night spills out plans for new immigration, defense, energy and tax policy. And there's a lot of big numbers here. For one, it calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. That's tied to an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that are expiring at the end of the year.
And then campaign promises are also included in this plan that Trump made about eliminating taxes on tips. It also calls for $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending that would dramatically reshape the federal budget, numbers that help fuel a lot of internal disagreement for the party.
Yeah. And I guess we should mention that's over the course of 10 years. These unbelievably large numbers are over the course of a decade, but they're still pretty big on an annual basis. It sounds like the party's right wing ultimately caused more trouble than the more moderate wing.
Exactly. We saw a lot of those that were worried about the spending as holdouts at the beginning of the day. That includes Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio, Victoria Spartz of Indiana, and Tim Burchett of Tennessee. But they all flipped in the end. The party was facing a very tight margin and could only lose perhaps one member. That was it. So it set up this chaotic vote that was on.
It was off and back on again in a matter of 10 minutes. But members such as Burchett switched to a yes after a phone call with Trump. So in the end, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey was the only no. He's a loyal fiscal hawk who was opposed to the trillions in new spending.
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