Republicans ready late-night session on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' after GOP mutiny

Fox News

18-05-2025

House lawmakers are being summoned to Capitol Hill late Sunday night as Republicans' self-imposed deadline to pass President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" looms just days away.
The House Budget Committee is meeting at 10 p.m. for a vote on advancing the wide-ranging legislation toward a chamber-wide vote later this week.
Initial plans to advance the bill on Friday morning were upended in a mutiny by four members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus – Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., all joined Democrats in voting against the bill.
The fiscal hawks are opposed to aspects of the legislation's crackdown on Medicaid, which Republicans have said they are only trimming for waste, fraud, and abuse. But Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied people are not set to kick in until 2029, and conservatives have argued that it was a large window of time for those changes to be undone, among other concerns.
They're also pushing for a more aggressive effort to repeal green energy tax subsidies passed in the former Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That push has pitted them against Republican lawmakers whose districts have businesses that have benefited from the tax relief.
Meanwhile House GOP leaders and the White House have held the bill up as the most significant fiscal reform in decades.
Holdouts were expected to negotiate with GOP leaders in Congress and the White House through the weekend.
"I really need to see something in writing. You know, we've talked enough. They know where we are. And you know, before, if it's just if it's the same old thing, that we can't get [a majority], we're going to have to pretty much stick with what we have, I've got a problem," Norman told Fox News Digital on Sunday morning
He said he and other critics of the legislation were asked to meet with House GOP leaders at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.
Republicans are working to pass Trump's agenda via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party controlling both Congress and the White House to pass vast pieces of legislation while completely sidelining the minority – in this case, Democrats.
It does so by lowering the Senate's threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, lining up with the House's own simple majority. The legislation must adhere to a specific set of rules, however, including only items related to federal spending, tax, and the national debt.
Both the House and Senate are dealing with razor-thin margins. That extends to the House Budget Committee as well, where Republicans can only lose two of their own to still advance the legislation.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was confident that Republicans could overcome their differences and stick to their timeline during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.
"The plan is to move it to the Rules Committee by midweek, and to the House floor by the end of the week, as we meet our initial, our original Memorial Day deadline," Johnson said.
Johnson said Republicans also "have got to compromise" on Medicaid work requirements, adding he was in contact with states "to make sure what the earliest possible date is."
"This is the biggest spending reduction in three decades, maybe longer," Johnson said.
Norman signaled that significant compromise was going to have to be made on leaders' parts.
"Let's say they want it to kick in, in a year or six months. It ought to be now, but we'll look at that. We're not inflexible," he said. "But the main thing I want to relay, this isn't the end-all-catch-all-be-all. Nobody would disagree that the tax cuts are good policy, and nobody would disagree with President Trump's wanting to phase out Green New Deal scam credits. Anyone we want to do it on day one. So we're carrying out his policies."
Meanwhile Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, a close ally of Roy's, took to X in support of the bill after it failed Friday.
"Critics have attacked the House's One Big Beautiful reconciliation bill on fiscal grounds, but I think they are profoundly wrong. It is truly historic," Vought said. "The bill satisfies the very red-line test that House fiscal hawks laid out a few weeks ago that stated that the cost of any tax cut could be paid for with $2.5 trillion in assumed economic growth, but the rest had to be covered with savings from reform."
Trump blasted the people holding up the legislation as grandstanders in a Truth Social post Friday.
Those rebels and their allies, however, have argued that they are only pushing to fully enact Trump's agenda.
"He campaigned on cutting the Green New Deal. But it's really a scam…. But this bill to postpone phase-out for seven years, it's just money we don't have," Norman said.
Economic Policy Innovation Center founder Paul Winfree wrote on X Saturday, "Several of the Members of Congress negotiating on the OBBB this weekend are trying to make it even better. In fact, there is a significant group that has been fighting all along to make sure that [Trump] gets the biggest win possible."
Moving ahead with Sunday night's vote is a sign of confidence by House GOP leaders, but it's not yet clear how it will play out. In addition to the Medicaid and IRA differences, Republicans must also reconcile current disagreements with blue state GOP lawmakers over State and Local tax (SALT) deduction caps.
The legislation raised the current $10,000 cap to $30,000, but a handful of blue state Republicans rejected the compromise as insufficient.
Meanwhile, conservatives in redder districts are demanding deeper pay cuts if the SALT deduction cap was raised.
SALT Caucus member Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., suggested raising taxes on the highest earners to offset the cost – it would likely be an uphill battle to enact, though some conservatives have also signaled openness to the idea.
"The One Big Beautiful Bill has stalled—and it needs wind in its sails. Allowing the top tax rate to expire—returning from 37% to 39.6% for individuals earning over $609,350 and married couples earning over $731,200—breathes $300 billion of new life into the effort," LaLota wrote on X Saturday.
"It's a fiscally responsible move that reflects the priorities of the new Republican Party: protect working families, address the deficit, fix the unfair SALT cap, and safeguard programs like Medicaid and SNAP—without raising taxes on the middle class."