(Substack)—Republican Senate Whip John Barrasso told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that he believes the Senate will be able to match the big spending cuts proposed in the House version of the budget. In fact, he thinks the Senate might cut deeper.
Today, exclusively on @SundayFutures with @MariaBartiromo, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso @SenJohnBarrasso spoke about Congressional Republicans working to pass President Trump’s Agenda.@FoxNews pic.twitter.com/ELk11B1baN
— SundayMorningFutures (@SundayFutures) May 4, 2025
This is a big departure from the original plans which had the House proposing $1.5 trillion in cuts while the Senate plan barely cut a few billion dollars. And while many of us who are fiscal conservatives believe even the House cuts don’t go deep enough, it’s good to see indications that the Senate may not continue their business-as-usual stance from a month ago.
According to Red State:
It was a wide-ranging discussion, covering the first (and next) 100 days, Democrats’ efforts to thwart the successes of the administration — and Republicans — and tariffs. But the key moments, in my view, came when Bartiromo pressed Barrasso on proposed spending cuts in the reconciliation package.
House Republicans have proposed roughly $1.5 trillion in cuts, and the concern is that Senate Republicans won’t be able to meet that. But Barrasso stated affirmatively that he believes they will meet, if not exceed, that level of cuts as they work toward finalizing the reconciliation package.
Here is a partial transcript of the interview compiled by Red State:
BARTIROMO: I know you’ve been working hard on this reconciliation package. Do you feel you have the votes to get it over the finish line in the Senate?
BARRASSO: I’m very confident we’ll get there, Maria. Look, these first 100 days with President Trump — you talk about the pace and the progress made — it’s been breathtaking. And in terms of securing the border, getting his cabinet in place so quickly, lowering prices for the first time in four years — amazing. But it’s not just those first 100 days; the next 100 days are critical because we probably have a shorter period of time than that. We have promised the American people safety and prosperity, and that means a comprehensive economic plan that needs to be passed so we can get to this strong, healthy economy that is growing. So those are the things we want to do: higher wages, lower costs, more jobs here in America — bring them back home. The other reason we have to get this done in a timely manner is that if we don’t, the Democrats’ $4 trillion tax increase will come into play. We need to stop that. The Democrats are trying to make us fail because they like high taxes, they like big spending government. Look, they’re the party of open borders, high prices. We will succeed, we need to succeed. It’s so important to put more money back into the American people’s pockets.
BARTIROMO: So, Senator, tell us what the issues are. I mean, everything that you just laid out, someone who is not focused on all the details would say, “Well, why wouldn’t all of the senators be in favor of that?” The last time you had to do this, back in President Trump’s first term, you didn’t get this done until December, the end of the year. What are the issues that are holding back some of your colleagues? Is it raising the debt ceiling? Is it SALT? What is it specifically
BARRASSO: Well, specifically, I like to talk about the things we agree on, and we agree on securing the border, we agree on keeping taxes low and getting prices down, and those are the things we agree on. And we have actually done a blueprint —it passed the House, it passed the Senate. So we’re on the right path, and you mentioned earlier the numbers: We need 51 votes in the Senate; the House needs 218 votes. As the whip, my job is to make sure that we can get the votes there — that’s my focus.
BARTIROMO: And some of your members might come back at you and say, “Sure, but this is our one opportunity to actually get spending under control and cut into that $37 trillion in debt.” Do you believe that you will be able to match what the House has identified — $1.5 trillion in spending cuts? Because so far, the Senate has come up with, what, three or four billion dollars in spending cuts? So, tell us now definitively: Do you believe you’ll be able to match the House’s spending cuts?
BARRASSO: Well, I do. And actually, our number is a little higher than that of what we’d like to get to. The American people know the government is too big, it spends too much. They saw this list of things that have come out of the spending under the bloated budgets of the Biden administration for the last four years, that have given us the highest inflation in 40 years. And when people see this list of $20 million for Sesame Street in Iraq or sex change operations uh in Guatemala, people are furious — here in Wyoming and across the country. Yeah, the Democrats are mad, too, not because of the amount of spending but because we exposed the amount of spending that we’re done — we need to wipe this out.
BARTIROMO: Right, well, look…you’ve done a great job. Let’s not forget it wasn’t just the best 100 days for a president in these last 100 days — it was also a very positive 100 days for you and your colleagues in the Senate, having passed President Trump’s cabinet…in record time — congratulations to you on that — as well as passing things like the…Laken Riley Act and the Fentanyl Act. But…I want to get that number — what number do you believe you’ll be able to come up with in terms of spending cuts? You just said to me it’ll be more than one and a half trillion — what are you thinking?
BARRASSO: Well, that’s what we’re working on, you know…members of the Senate Finance Committee — we’ve been meeting since last summer on…coming up with potential reductions in spending by the federal government. Our aim is $2 trillion. I don’t know that we’re going to get there — we’re going to match whatever the House is able to do. We need to get a bill passed the House, passed the Senate, and to the president’s desk so we can make a difference in the lives of the American people and get this country back on track and get more money into their pockets.
If we had better Republicans on Capitol Hill, we could see the massive cuts that are required to save this nation from economic collapse. But any large cuts at this point are welcomed. If the Senate can at least match the House, it’s a step (albeit small) in the right direction.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
