WASHINGTON — Ahead of a morning Budget Committee meeting, U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle gathered his senior advisers in a brightly lit conference room just off the Capitol to settle on a simple strategy.

“Let’s keep the main thing the main thing,” he said. “Fifteen million Americans are gonna lose their healthcare because Republicans care more about tax breaks for billionaires. It’s accurate. You can describe it in a sentence.”

Boyle, a six-term lawmaker, is the most veteran of Pennsylvania’s eight Democrats in Washington. He has been the ranking member of the House Budget Committee since 2023, meaning he is the top Democrat playing defense as the Republican-controlled Congress ushers through GOP spending priorities. It can be a futile exercise in shouting into a void — until the yelling starts to echo outside.

Increasingly, Boyle, known as the Democrats’ “budget guy,” has been the man behind the messaging against President Donald Trump’s reconciliation bill and the shutdown fight over healthcare.

“He’s one of our best messengers who appropriately comes across as both strong and authentic at the same period of time,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said in an interview late last month.

Jeffries credited Boyle with homing in on a key statistic: Taken together, Trump’s reconciliation bill and the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits represent the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.

“That one observation became core to our arguments in pushing back against that toxic piece of legislation, and it’s also one of the reasons I believe that the law is so deeply unpopular amongst the American people,” Jeffries said.

Democrats have been recently on a roller coaster — securing big wins in the November election and then splitting over how long to withstand the government shutdown, with eight senators ultimately crossing the aisle to end the impasse. But Boyle’s messaging war is ongoing, and he thinks it is his party’s best bet for winning key midterm races in his home state, where Democrats are targeting four Republican-held seats in swing areas.

If Democrats reclaim Congress in next year’s election, Boyle would shift from ranking member to chair of the powerful Budget Committee — becoming the first Pennsylvanian to lead it since Philadelphian Bill Gray, a Democrat who chaired it from 1985 to 1989. It would be another resumé builder for the 48-year-old lawmaker whose role in Washington keeps growing and who has not ruled out a potential Senate run in 2028, when Democratic Sen. John Fetterman’s seat would be up.

“I get asked a lot: How do you keep this message going for the next year?” Boyle said in an interview in his Washington office. “Well, we started this five months ago, and actually more people know about it today than over the summer. Every single day, continuing to talk about healthcare, continuing a broader conversation about affordability, is absolutely what we have to do.”

‘Scrappy Irish Catholic boys from Olney’

Boyle, who lives in Somerton with his wife and 11-year-old daughter, is an affable, earnest lawmaker in a role that is unapologetically wonky — and high-profile, especially lately.

From Oct. 1 through the end of November — a period including the shutdown — Boyle popped up on TV news more than two dozen times, by his office’s count.

His political beginnings were far less polished. In 2014, Boyle shocked Philadelphia’s political establishment by winning the Democratic primary over a field that included former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies, scion of a powerful political family. Then a 37-year-old state representative, Boyle ran as a blue-collar, antiestablishment pragmatist from Northeast Philly. His ads cast his opponents as out of touch, and he leaned hard on his family’s story: his father, an Irish immigrant, worked at an Acme warehouse and later as a SEPTA janitor; his mother was a school crossing guard. Boyle still keeps his dad’s SEPTA cap on a bookshelf in his Washington office.

That same year, his brother Kevin won a seat in the state House, prompting Philadelphia Magazine to profile the “scrappy Irish Catholic boys from Olney” who were reshaping the party.

A decade later, Democrats are still striving to win back blue-collar voters. Boyle, meanwhile, has traded some of his insurgent edge for the stature of a Hill veteran. As Philadelphia elects a replacement for retiring U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans next year, Boyle will be a key ally for the new lawmaker, and a coveted endorsement during the election, though he has said he does not plan to weigh in. He has been in the thick of some of the year’s biggest fights — leading Democrats through a 12-hour reconciliation markup, testifying at a 1 a.m. Rules Committee hearing, and grinding through an overnight Ways and Means marathon.

His younger brother has had a far more tumultuous path. Kevin lost his state House seat last year amid long-running mental health struggles.

Boyle declined to discuss the situation beyond saying: “The last five years — almost exactly five years — have been very challenging. And I’ll just leave it at that.”

Before that late November hearing, Boyle had already reached out to fellow Democrats on the committee: Talk about healthcare, he urged them. Talk about affordability. Talk about it ad nauseam.

He sat at the dais across from a portrait of Gray in an ornate hearing room, surrounded by paintings of former budget chairs, and delivered his opening remarks.

“The president has stopped calling it the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ He’s stopped talking about the bill altogether,” Boyle said. “… Because it’s not just that healthcare’s become unaffordable in America. It is beef, it is coffee, it’s electricity, almost every staple in the average consumer basket.”

The director of the Congressional Budget Office, Phillip Swagel, was called before the committee that day and fielded questions from both sides. Democrats wanted to know Swagel’s projections on how Trump’s policies would affect everything from the national debt to the price of Thanksgiving dinners, eager for sound bites to send to constituents back home and to pressure Republicans on the healthcare debate.

Republicans were pushing Swagel for an audit, seeking more transparency on how the nonpartisan agency comes to its projections.

“We need to be able to cut through the politics and the partisanship and figure out where you and your team can do a better job,” said U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, the Texas Republican who chairs the committee.

Boyle, whose office uses CBO projections to compile and distribute national and district-level data to Democrats, said he is open to an audit, if performed responsibly and not as a means to “discredit” the agency over numbers Republicans don’t like.

Throughout the three-hour hearing, Boyle would sidebar with Arrington, who is retiring next year. The Philly Democrat and the West Texas conservative make an unlikely pair, but the two have bonded across many late-night sessions over having younger children and their college football fanaticism — Boyle for his alma mater, Notre Dame, Arrington for Texas Tech.

“He’s a very good communicator because he’s a really smart and thoughtful guy,” Arrington said. “I always can appreciate, whether I agree or not, with a good communicator. He’s authentic in what he believes and he’ll even say, ‘I grant you it’s not perfect,’ or ‘You make a good point.’”

“…Because it’s not just that healthcare’s become unaffordable in America, it is beef, it is coffee, it’s electricity, almost every staple in the average consumer basket.”

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle

The midterms will dictate not just the party that controls Congress but also which ideological track the Budget Committee takes. If Democrats win, and Boyle takes the gavel, he plans to put more scrutiny on the administration and aim to regain some of Congress’ control over purse strings that Republicans have ceded to Trump.

Another Pennsylvanian, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican who represents Lancaster, has announced he is running to be the top Republican on the committee following Arrington’s retirement. That means regardless of party control, two Pennsylvanians will likely be at the helm of one of the most powerful committees in Congress. Smucker, a fiscal conservative running with Arrington’s backing, said in an interview he would focus on rising national debt and getting a budget resolution adopted. He was a key negotiator for Republicans during reconciliation, helping to get conservative House Freedom Caucus members on board.

Smucker called Boyle someone who is “serious about the budget process, and wants to make sure that it functions.”

“He genuinely cares about strengthening Congress as an institution,” Smucker added.

The longer Boyle stays in the House, in a safe Democratic seat, the harder it is to think about walking away.

In September, Jeffries appointed him the lead Democrat for the congressional delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. For Boyle, a history lover who has biographies of George Washington on his office coffee table, it’s an exciting opportunity to represent the country internationally as Trump continues to criticize the historic alliance. Boyle would become the leader of the parliamentary assembly delegation if Democrats take control of the House, just as he would take the gavel in the Budget Committee. Past committee chairs include former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

“Some really high-quality, high-caliber people have done that over the last 40 years. So that’s what I’m looking forward to in the near term,” Boyle said. “After that, come 2028, and beyond, we’ll deal with that then. But it is interesting, like the longer you’re here, and if you move up the ranks, then actually it does make it more difficult to leave.”

But Boyle has not been shy about airing frustrations with Fetterman, whose term is up in 2028, sparking speculation Boyle could have an interest in a run against him.

Boyle said he avoided criticizing Fetterman until this spring, when the senator’s positions started to directly conflict with the party messaging he was pushing out.

“As I was doing TV opportunity after TV opportunity, what I increasingly found was that the clip they would show before I would be asked the question wouldn’t be a clip of what Donald Trump had said; it would be a clip of what my state’s Democratic senator had said,” Boyle said. “And I obviously would have to combat it.”

Fetterman has embraced an independent streak as a purple-state senator, often willing to work with the GOP. While pleasing to voters eager to see compromise and bipartisanship in a tenuous moment in Washington, it has also alienated some progressives.

“He genuinely cares about strengthening Congress as an institution.”

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker

Boyle said when it comes to the Senate, “I don’t rule anything in and I don’t rule anything out.”

If he were to run, a challenge could be building his statewide profile. He is still relatively unknown outside Philadelphia, though he has proven to be a prolific fundraiser. Today’s politics also tend to elevate showmen and outsiders, while Boyle has the more traditional cadence of an establishment politician — disciplined, polished, and most compelling when he speaks off-script.

Some local Philadelphia Democrats have criticized Boyle’s voting record on immigration, arguing it has not reflected the interests of the Latino community he represents in his majority-minority district. Boyle voted for the bipartisan Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain noncitizens who are arrested or charged with certain crimes, often forgoing due process. He was one of 46 Democrats in the House along with 12 in the Senate, including Fetterman, to support the GOP-led bill.

“I have the same criticism as I do of Josh Shapiro: I wish he would take a stronger stance on immigration,” said State Rep. Danilo Burgos, who represents North Philadelphia. At the same time, Burgos credited Boyle as being a “good partner in our community” who always returns phone calls and texts.

For now, Boyle keeps an extremely busy schedule. The day of the budget hearing, his schedule stretched over 15 hours. He hustled from a meeting with Social Security and Medicaid experts to a floor vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Back in his office, where Eagles throw blankets, Phillies pennants, and a painting of Donegal, Ireland, his father’s home county, decorate the space, he sat down for his final meeting of the day.

Gwen Mills, the international president of UNITE HERE, a labor union that represents hospitality workers, wanted advice on how to translate Democrats’ work in Washington to members frustrated with both parties.

“Talk about affordability and how Republicans are making it worse — with the so-called beautiful bill,” Boyle suggested, running through some numbers and data before offering up a simpler sound bite:

“It boils down to life in America is just too damn expensive right now.”