Republican leaders sat down recently with President Donald Trump and his top aides about avoiding a budget debacle this fall. Not everyone was on the same page
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For years, Mulvaney and Vought were the kind of conservative agitators that made life difficult for McConnell and his caucus. Now they have Trump’s ear on fiscal issues and have been directed to cut a deal with Congress — even though they’ve already expressed resistance to increasing spending in any pact with Democrats, raising the prospect of another shutdown fight or even a debt ceiling showdown in the fall.
So Senate Republicans are instead pinning their hopes on Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was deputized after the April encounter to enter into the critical spending talks. Mnuchin is viewed as so integral to the negotiations that a Tuesday meeting among Senate Republicans and the trio of administration officials was postponed to accommodate his schedule.
And at meetings with the administration in recent weeks, one Senate Republican familiar with the talks noted that at times Mnuchin has physically positioned himself more closely than usual to the president and lawmakers. Mnuchin hasn’t yet successfully negotiated a spending deal with Congress, a difficult task given Trump’s aggressive drive for border wall money that left the government partially shuttered for 35 days this winter.
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