Speaker Johnson vows to forge ahead with ‘big beautiful bill' vote with GOP budget hawks on fence
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) planned to move forward with a vote as early as Wednesday night on President Trump's 'big beautiful bill' following what Johnson called a 'productive' meeting with Republican holdouts at the White House — despite several not committing to backing the legislation.
'The plan is to move forward as expected,' Johnson told reporters after returning to Capitol Hill. 'I think that all of our colleagues here will really like this final product and I think we're going to move forward.'
'We can resolve there concerns and it will be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas as well as here in Congress,' he added. 'There may be executive orders.'
5 'The plan is to move forward as expected,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters after returning to Capitol Hill.
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'The meeting was productive and moved the ball in the right direction,' agreed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. 'The president reiterated how critical it is for the country to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill as quickly as possible.'
Members of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus have objected to Medicaid changes not taking effect until 2029 — and hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of green-energy tax credits from former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act not being put on the chopping block.
Four Republicans — Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Breechen of Oklahoma — delayed the bill's passage out of the House Budget Committee last week to make their complaints known before allowing it through two days later.
Since then, many House conservatives have withheld their plans for the vote until a series of so-called manager's amendments are introduced with their preferred adjustments, which House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) expected to take place later Wednesday.
5 Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) tweeted Thursday afternoon that he wouldn't vote for the bill.
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Other House Republicans have made their discontent public.
'I am a 'NO' on the reconciliation bill in its current form,' Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) tweeted Thursday afternoon.
The setback came amid intense deliberations with White House officials as well as more moderate rank-and-file factions — including Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Young Kim (R-Calif.) and Tom Kean (R-NJ), who have led calls for a higher cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
Trump himself slammed the Biden-era tax incentives as part of a 'Green New Scam' and urged House Republicans Tuesday to pass it without further altering Medicaid or tweaking a $30,000 SALT deduction limit.
5 President Trump slammed the tax incentives as part of a 'Green New Scam' and urged House Republicans Tuesday to pass it without too much tinkering to Medicaid or a $30,000 increase in State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions.
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'In the last 24 hours, there was a little SALT deal made, and I don't think it went in the right direction,' Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-Md.) said earlier Thursday, 'but the White House offered a proposal late last night that I think fulfills the other two parts of what the president talked about.'
'There's broad agreement in the House Freedom Caucus that if that's included in the package, I think this package is on route to get passed,' he added. 'The runway is short for today. The leadership's gonna have to figure out, you know, where to go from here.'
'Fourteen years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer, and one of the reasons I ran for Congress was to deal with our very badly broken health care system,' Roy told reporters Thursday. 'The vulnerable Americans are on waitlists because we've got a broken [Medicaid] system that rewards the able-bodied over the vulnerable.'
5 House Republicans can only afford three defectors if all members are present to vote on the package, which comprises a roughly $4 trillion tax cut extension from Trump's first term.
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'For the bill to move off of the floor, these issues have to be addressed,' he said. 'It has massive deficits in the first five years because we're not addressing the structural reform that we're talking about right here, including very specifically eliminating the 45% of the subsidies under the Green New Scam that continue.'
House Republicans can only afford three defectors if all members are present to vote on the package, which comprises a roughly $4 trillion extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime pay, and increased defense and border security funding.
Reconciliation allows the bill to be voted through by a simple majority so long as only the debt ceiling, revenue and spending levels are changed.
5 'There may be executive orders,' Johnson said to complement the reconciliation package.
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The GOP holds 220 seats in the House, compared with Democrats' 212 following the death early Wednesday of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
The House Rules Committee was still debating the legislation Wednesday evening and had yet to issue updated amendments codifying any changes.
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