The House Republicans Holding Out Against Trump’s Budget and Tax Cut Plan

Representative Eric Burlison, a two-term congressman from Missouri’s Ozarks, is unequivocal about his support for President Trump.

“I love the president,” he said this week as he walked through the Capitol.

But Mr. Burlison is also one of about a dozen hard-line conservative Republicans who have said they cannot back their party’s budget blueprint to unlock Mr. Trump’s spending and tax cuts, even as the president is imploring them to support it in a vote that could come as early as Wednesday.

“I can’t live with myself if I go back home and I added more debt and deficits without any kind of correction whatsoever,” said Mr. Burlison, a financial analyst who campaigned on bringing down the debt. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

A former state lawmaker, he successfully pushed for the Missouri Legislature to seek an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget.

The unusual burst of resistance that emerged on Capitol Hill came from lawmakers who typically count themselves among Mr. Trump’s closest allies. G.O.P. lawmakers have long shown Mr. Trump extraordinary deference, and at the outset of his second term have caved to him on critical votes after getting a personal call or finding themselves on the receiving end of a blistering social media post.

They still may relent. After Mr. Trump met with a group of House Republicans on Tuesday, a handful of holdouts dropped their opposition to the resolution. But their insistence that they would not support a measure without the promise of deeper spending cuts underscored the challenge for G.O.P. leaders toiling to manage a group in their ranks who view reducing the debt as their north star.

The problem for Republicans like Mr. Burlison is that the level of spending cuts the resolution requires Senate committees to find — about $4 billion over a decade — is a fraction of the $2 trillion in spending cuts that the House has approved. House Republicans fear that if they agree to the Senate’s budget resolution, the Senate will ultimately force them to accept a far lower level of spending cuts than they want.

Republican leaders have said that number is a minimum and is intended to give them flexibility to comply with strict procedural rules in the Senate.

Hard-line House conservatives are also unimpressed with the Senate’s insistence that extending the tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 would cost nothing because it simply maintains current policy. Senate Republicans have adopted that approach so they could extend the tax cuts indefinitely without appearing to balloon the deficit.

The reviews of the gimmick from spending hawks have been scathing.

“The American people want and expect results, not more fiscal trickery,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee said.

“Unserious and disappointing,” Representative Jodey Arrington of Texas, the chairman of the Budget Committee, declared.

“More business as usual at a time when that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid,” said Representative David Schweikert of Arizona, who keeps a “debt dashboard” on his official website.

To move the process along, the House and the Senate must adopt the same resolution. That is why Mr. Trump has thrown his weight behind the blueprint. He met with roughly a dozen House Republicans at the White House on Tuesday for two hours, and capped the meeting with an entreaty on social media for the House to quickly adopt the plan.

“Close your eyes and get there; it’s a phenomenal bill,” Mr. Trump told lawmakers at a dinner Tuesday in Washington. “Stop grandstanding.”

With a vote looming, House Republicans may yet come around. On several occasions when he has been short of votes — including for his own re-election to the top post in the House — Speaker Mike Johnson has been able to rely on Mr. Trump to pressure recalcitrant Republicans to fall in line, by plowing ahead on the House floor and essentially daring holdouts to publicly defy the president.

But some showed a remarkable degree of resistance on Tuesday, citing core principles.

“We just believe that we can move his agenda forward — of maximizing the tax cuts and the spending reductions — by not improving this budget resolution,” said Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus.

Mr. Harris said he turned down an invitation to meet with Mr. Trump on Tuesday at the White House to discuss his concerns.

“There’s nothing that I can hear at the White House that I don’t understand about the situation,” he said. “Let the president spend time with people whose minds he might change. He’s just not going to change my mind.”

Their opposition was reminiscent of scenes that played out in December, when Mr. Trump implored Republicans to pass a government funding bill that also raised the debt limit. Dozens refused.

During those negotiations, Mr. Trump singled out Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who was forcefully making the case against the legislation both in public and in private, and called for his ouster.

That broadside served as a reminder of the perils of crossing Mr. Trump for many Republicans, who privately acknowledge that their nightmare scenario is his endorsing a primary challenger in their district.

Now Mr. Roy is again among the ranks of fiscal conservatives who are at odds with Mr. Trump. He attended the White House meeting on Tuesday, but left saying he was still opposed to the budget resolution.

“The math still doesn’t math,” Mr. Roy said.