House GOP leaders brought their budget resolution to the floor for the vote, just minutes after pulling it at the last minute Tuesday evening as they struggled to win over a handful of conservative fiscal hawks who had threatened to tank the framework for President Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda.
In a stunning scene on the House floor, top Republican lawmakers decided to scrap plans to vote on the measure after lobbying holdouts in the chamber for more than an hour. They kept the previous vote open for far longer than anticipated, allowing leaders to speak with those opposed to the measure.
GOP leaders just minutes later reversed course, bringing the bill to the floor and opening the vote, seemingly signaling it had the support to pass.
Trump on Monday and Tuesday had personally talked to holdouts — who included fiscal hawks skeptical about its effect on deficits and moderates concerned about potential cuts to Medicaid — trying to get their support for the “one big beautiful bill.”
That effort appears to have failed, before the sudden reversal.
The measure outlines broad parameters for a package that will include Trump’s tax, border, and energy priorities, as well as cuts elsewhere to offset the cost of those, and a $4 trillion debt limit increase.
The clock is ticking, with Johnson saying for weeks he wants to adopt a budget resolution by the end of this month in order to get a final bill to Trump’s desk by the end of May.
And while Trump has thrown his support behind the House’s one-bill reconciliation strategy, Senate Republicans are waiting in the wings with a plan B. They already advanced a slimmed-down alternative budget resolution that would deliver a border funding boost but leave the thorny issues surrounding tax cuts and other cuts for a second bill.
Republicans aim to use the special budget reconciliation process, which can only be used once or twice in a year, to get those GOP agenda items to Trump’s desk while bypassing the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. But Republicans are now seeing how much they can feasibly pack into one bill.
The Senate GOP argues that they want to deliver Trump a win and border funding as fast as possible, while the House GOP warns that the party could lose momentum on tax priorities if they leave those issues for later.
But in the fractious House GOP majority, it is a challenge to get near-unanimous support. Leaders can afford no more than one defection assuming all members are present and voting. Johnson was open about the challenges of getting all the members on board, saying earlier on Tuesday thatit was possible there would not be a vote.
In addition to having meetings with holdouts, GOP leaders enlisted the help of Trump to whip up support for his “one big beautiful bill” framework.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who has withheld support for the plan based on fiscal concerns, was spotted on the phone with the president as he walked into the House chamber for a procedural vote on Tuesday afternoon.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said he spoke to Trump multiple times over the last two days, airing his concerns about potential cuts to Medicaid.
“The size of the cut concerns me because we do not want to affect disabled people, peoples in nursing homes, senior citizens, working poor,” Van Drew said.
He added that Trump “is concerned with Medicaid as well and does not want to hurt it, period.”
While exact details would be determined later, the House resolution framework sets up a $100 billion in new defense spending and $200 billion in new border security related spending, while putting a cap of $4.5 trillion on 10-year cost of tax cuts. It outlines $1.5 trillion floor for deficit reductions.
In addition to Burchett, fiscal hawks Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said they were against the measure, while Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) dubbed himself a “lean no.” Those lawmakers largely took issue with the level of spending cuts in the measure and the impact the final bill would have on the federal deficit.
On the opposite end of the GOP conference, meanwhile, were moderates concerned about potential cuts to Medicaid in the ultimate Trump agenda bill. The resolution directs the Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — to find at least $880 billion in cuts, a figure that some lawmakers said could not be reached without significant slashes to the social safety net program.
Leadership, for its part, has rejected the notion that the bill will prompt significant Medicaid cuts. Johnson for weeks has said the conference just wants to root out “fraud, waste and abuse” in the program. Top lawmakers amped up that messaging on Tuesday.
“Do a word search for yourself,” Johnson said Tuesday morning. “It doesn’t even mention Medicaid in the bill, so that’s an important point.”
Skepticism, however, remains high that the conference will be able to achieve those levels without significant changes to the social safety net program, signaling the headwinds House GOP leaders will face as they work to craft the bill in the coming weeks and months.
This story was updated at 8:01 p.m.
