Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
Congress is back for a three-week sprint to Easter recess facing key decisions on a budget resolution that will help determine the depth of any Medicaid cuts.
Why it matters: Republican lawmakers, particularly in the House, have been eyeing work rules and other significant changes to the program that insures more than 70 million Americans.
State of play: Sen. John Hoeven said Sunday on Fox News that the Senate could take up its version of the budget resolution as soon as "the week after next" after reconciling differences with the House-passed measure.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he wants to get the final bill to President Trump's desk by Memorial Day.
- These types of timelines tend to slip, though.
- House GOP leaders released a statement Monday pressuring the Senate to take up the House budget, but that appears unlikely to happen without changes.
Those timelines would require the Senate to also move quickly, and that chamber has more lawmakers hesitant to make cuts to the safety net program.
- The budget resolution the House passed included instructions for the Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in savings, most of which would probably need to come from Medicaid.
- The chambers have to agree on a single blueprint in order to move forward in reconciliation.
The procedural back-and-forth has put further decisions about Medicaid on hold for the moment, House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie said before the recess.
- "We're still waiting to see what the Senate is going to do and what our final instructions are going to be, and once we get that figured out, then we know the direction we're going to go," Guthrie said. "We have to have instructions before we can do anything."
- House Republicans are also pushing for other health care policies to be included in reconciliation, such as a "doc fix," which was left out of the clean continuing resolution, or overhauling PBM business practices.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are trying to bring up the bipartisan health care package from December as a stand-alone bill, but there is not much interest from Republicans.
- Sen. Rick Scott objected before recess without elaborating when Sen. Ron Wyden sought unanimous consent on the floor.
What we're watching: The Finance Committee plans a Tuesday vote on Mehmet Oz's nomination to lead CMS. He is expected to be on his way to confirmation.
