Some of the top tax rate reversals in the Truss's Conservative Party opposed any move to reduce benefits at a time when millions are struggling with higher costs of food and energy.
Penny Mordaunt, who is in Truss' cabinet of senior ministers, said benefits should rise in line with inflation. Damian Green, part of the party's centrist faction, said he doubted a real-terms cut would pass a parliamentary vote.
Green told BBC Radio that there will be many of my colleagues who think that when you're reaching for spending cuts, benefit payments are not the way to do it. Another lawmaker, Roger Gale, signalled his opposition.
Victoria Prentis, a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, told Reuters that the government had to go through the numbers before it could make a final decision on benefits.
British interior minister Suella Braverman accused some parts of the party of staging a coup over the top tax rate cut. She said I am very disappointed about how some of my colleagues behaved at the party's annual conference.
Braverman said when she ran for the leader of the party she was quite clear that she wanted to cut welfare spending and that she supported the cut to the top rate of tax.
Kwarteng has set the date for his next fiscal statement on November 23. A government source said that the Treasury was considering bringing that forward but the change would most likely be announced once parliament resumes next week.
Truss was Britain's fourth leader in six years last month, promising to reignite the economy and bring some political stability after the chaotic leadership of Boris Johnson.
She was elected by her party's members, not the broader electorate, and was not the most popular candidate among the more than 350 Conservative members of parliament. Her decision to stake out a tax cut plan and then concede defeat has left lawmakers and investors questioning her judgement and authority.
Some lawmakers and commentators have been questioning whether she has a mandate to take Britain back to a 1980 reagonomics policy without a national election at the annual conference in Birmingham, central England.
The Conservatives won the election in 2019 with Johnson promising to increase spending on public services.
It is not a good thing to sell the public on one type of package and vision and then completely flip it and appear not to care, Rachel Wolf, co-author of the Conservatives 2019 manifesto, said on Sunday.
The Bank of England had to intervene last week with a package worth up to 65 billion pounds to shore up the bond market, because investors have taken a fright at the new economic policy direction, hammering the value of British assets so hard.
Mohamed El-Erian, an adviser to financial services giant Allianz, said the government needed to get its house in order. He said that we are not a developing country and we need to stop acting like a developing country.
The BoE action has calmed markets, at least for now, while investors took some comfort from the tax u-turn and the move to bring forward the publication date for the next fiscal plan from Nov. 23.
Boris Glass, senior economist at S&P Global ratings agency, said Britain was facing a difficult winter.
If strong medium-term growth can fully fund the extra spending, fiscal tightening appears to be inevitable, which may affect future growth, he said.