White House: Megabill's July 4 deadline stands

Politico

6 hours ago

The White House is forging ahead with its demand that Congress pass its sweeping megabill by July 4, insisting that the legislative effort remain on track despite mounting doubts about its viability on Capitol Hill.
Trump administration officials on Thursday downplayed a fresh set of rulings by the Senate parliamentarian that appeared to jeopardize core elements of the bill, casting it as a minor setback that lawmakers were already working to remedy.
And President Donald Trump is still planning to hold a 'One Big Beautiful Event' later in the afternoon touting the merits of the megabill, packing allies into the White House to urge the bill's passage even amid deepening divisions among Hill Republicans.
'We expect that bill to be on the president's desk for signature by July 4,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday, acknowledging the parliamentarian ruling setback. 'This is part of the inner workings of the United States Senate, but the president is adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day.'
The White House pressure campaign comes as the administration enters a key stretch that could determine the fate of its legislative ambitions — and shape the critical first year of Trump's term.
The president and his advisers have warned in a flurry of calls and meetings with lawmakers in recent days that a failure to push through the legislation could deal a major blow to the White House's agenda and damage the party's chances in the midterms.
'Run against the president on anything, you're in trouble — but if it's his No. 1 priority, you've got a real problem,' said one longtime Trump ally, granted anonymity to characterize the administration's message. 'If I were advising a United States senator who's teetering on the precipice of opposing, I would definitely tell them to think twice on this.'
White House officials expressed confidence that congressional Republicans would be able to rewrite the portions of the bill now under threat, ruling out — at least for now — a more combative effort to overrule the parliamentarian's decisions.
Leavitt on Thursday punted on directly saying whether Trump would support such a move, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune has already ruled out. Some close Trump allies in Congress are nevertheless pushing to ignore or remove the parliamentarian, with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) writingThursday that she 'SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP.'
In private, the setbacks have further dismayed some Trump advisers as well who were already frustrated by Senate Republicans' inability to coalesce behind a final version of the megabill. A handful of senators refuse to back the bill over Medicaid policies projected to cut coverage for millions of people and damage the finances of rural hospitals.
Some others, meanwhile, have pushed for deeper health care cuts to help fund the bill's tax breaks. Trump earlier this week met privately with some of those hardliners, including Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).
But Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who has raised alarms about the bill's impact on rural hospitals, later claimed that Trump expressed support in his own one-on-one conversation for a more moderate version of the cuts.
'Trump needs to be more engaged directly,' Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to the president, said of the effort to get the holdouts to fall in line. 'Failure is not an option. We have to get this done.'
Otherwise, Moore warned, 'it would be a political disaster for Republicans — and an economic disaster for the country.'