Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump are digging in to pass Republicans’ massive tax and safety-net reform bill by Friday in time for a July 4 celebration. The biggest hurdle in their way right now: dozens of House Republican holdouts who are wary the bill doesn’t deliver on key promises they’ve made to their constituents.
From fiscal hawks to vulnerable centrists worried about the Senate’s steeper Medicaid cuts, a substantial cross-section of the House GOP conference would rather take the time to amend the package and send it back to the Senate. Head GOP rebel Chip Roy of Texas said Tuesday the chances of passing a bill out of the House by that deadline are “a hell of a lot lower than they were even 48 hours ago” based on what he saw of the Senate bill.
And, for now, some are openly questioning Trump’s push to “GET IT DONE” by July 4.
“We’ll see. I doubt it,” Roy said.
But the Republican holdouts’ options are not good. They can either defy Trump or fall in line as they’ve consistently done throughout the last few months.
GOP hardliner Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, as he entered the Rules Committee Tuesday afternoon, told reporters he was a “no” vote on the bill, and that he would oppose the rule on the floor and the bill for final passage.
“What we ought to do is take exactly the House bill that we sent over and go home and say, ‘When you’re serious, come back.’ That’s my message,” Norman said. “I’ll work all weekend.” Fellow Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles followed up with a post also arguing for a delay. “If the House doesn’t pass the Senate’s version of the OBBB, then it turns into legislative ping-pong. But that’s okay,” Ogles wrote.
But GOP leaders quickly made clear that they intend to charge ahead to pass the legislation this week, and without changes.
“Everybody’s got different questions about pieces, but ultimately they recognize that this bill is still over 85 percent of what the House said,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday. “The plan is to bring it to the floor as the Senate sent it to us,” he added, noting leaders want to pass the legislation “as soon as possible.”
In a key sign of the bill’s momentum, influential budget hawks who have been key players in blocking the bill in recent months in order to forge better deals are not raising objections this time. It’s an acknowledgement that Trump and GOP leaders will push through the bill at any cost this week.
Still, Roy and other ultraconservatives have tried to push back on White House pressure to swallow the bill as is. He argued that Trump officials’ efforts to undercut fiscal hawks’ concerns about the legislation was “garbage.”
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who frequently acquiesces to Trump’s pressure, also noted the Senate version “violates the minimum fiscal framework … by roughly half a trillion dollars.”
“So members will have a decision to make,” she said.
Another significant obstacle for GOP leaders are the dozens of GOP members concerned about deeper Medicaid cuts in the new bill. Many are in competitive districts and already shaken by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) torching his conference’s Medicaid provisions on the Senate floor shortly after he announced his retirement.
Johnson in recent days tried to push Senate GOP leaders to soften the Medicaid cuts in their bill, to no avail. Privately, he warned Republicans the Senate’s approach could lose House Republicans the majority in the midterms and acknowledged reservations among some members.
“They went a little further than any of us would have preferred,” Johnson told reporters.
Johnson also told reporters Tuesday night in between meetings and calls with alarmed GOP members that he was still “optimistic” he could pass the bill by July 4.
But, asked about a possible floor rebellion on the floor Wednesday, he acknowledged: “I’ve got to play the cards that were dealt to me.”
And even while House GOP leaders are expressing public confidence, many House Republicans believe it’s very possible leaders push off Wednesday’s planned rule vote.
“I think they delay it,” said one House Republican close to leadership. “Because such vote would fail with a mixture of deficit hawks and health care and energy doves not liking how far the Senate veered from the House bill.”
The alarm among a swath of members about Medicaid has only escalated. On Monday, Johnson tried to calm anxious GOP members on a call with Main Street Caucus Republicans. But it went south for frustrated Republicans as Mehmet Oz, the Trump official who oversees Medicaid, insisted the Senate’s cuts went after waste, fraud and abuse. Even a swath of conservative House Republicans don’t want to vote on the Senate Medicaid cuts as they hear from their state hospital and the health care lobbies.
Other moderate House Republicans declined to weigh in on the Senate-passed bill. That includes Rep. Don Bacon, a key centrist Republican who announced this week he would not seek reelection.
“I’m keeping my powder dry,” he said.
Cassandra Dumay, Benjamin Guggenheim and Calen Razor contributed to this report.
