Washington — President Trump met with key conservative opponents of the massive budget package containing his second-term agenda on Wednesday, before GOP leaders made concessions to fiscal hawks and blue-state Republicans — with the goal of holding a vote on the bill within hours.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, returned from a meeting between President Trump and members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, calling it “productive.” Johnson stated that the plan remains unchanged, with the final version of the legislation to be unveiled later Wednesday.
“There’s not much changing here, because we thought the underlying product was so well done,” Johnson told reporters prior to its release.
The timing for a floor vote remained uncertain. Johnson had stated that the vote could take place either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, predicted the vote would take place Wednesday night.
“We’ve got to keep the bill moving,” Scalise said. “Because there are several more steps in the process. Of course, the Senate must proceed with its work.”
Before moving to the floor, the legislation had to pass through the Rules Committee, which approved it late Wednesday after a nearly 21-hour session. The committee began meeting shortly after 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning and continued until late in the night. Eighteen hours after the committee started meeting, House Republican leadership unveiled a “manager’s amendment,” which included much-anticipated changes to the legislation that had been negotiated in recent days.
The developments on Wednesday came after Mr. Trump met with House Republicans on Tuesday morning, as leaders increased their efforts to advance the bill.
The president pressed members to conform Tuesday, as the party’s opposing factions threatened to derail the plan with demands that would be difficult to reconcile. When he arrived on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump warned a few “grandstanders” that any GOP member who opposes what he and Republicans have dubbed the “big, beautiful bill” would be “knocked out so fast.”
“It’s the biggest bill ever passed, and we’ve got to get it done,” Trump said.
Given his slim majority, Johnson can only afford three defections on the floor, assuming all members are present and voting. All Democrats are expected to oppose it.
“If the vote were held right now, it would die a painful death,” said Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee on Tuesday evening.
However, a day later, on Wednesday evening, Republican Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota expressed confidence in the outcome: “I believe we’ll have the votes.”
Rules committee meets overnight — as conservatives push for more spending cuts
When the Rules Committee met early Wednesday, Democrats chastised Republicans for the timing.
“If you guys think this ugly bill is so damn beautiful, like Trump keeps saying, you should have the courage to debate it in primetime,” Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said.
Republicans, on the other hand, opposed the request to adjourn the meeting until daylight. The committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, stated that the Rules Committee “has a long tradition of meeting late into the evening and reporting legislation long after most of America has gone to bed.”
The committee held a rare overnight meeting as Republican leadership works to pass the budget package before its self-imposed Memorial Day deadline.
Johnson has been meeting with various factions in recent days to hear their demands and reach an agreement on a modified version of the legislation drafted by nearly a dozen House committees.
More conservative members, upset that the bill does not include steep enough spending cuts to significantly reduce the deficit, have pushed for Medicaid work requirements to begin much sooner than the 2029 deadline. They also want to end all clean energy subsidies established by the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by former President Joe Biden.
After right-wing opposition appeared to hold firm overnight, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters Wednesday morning that the White House had offered a proposal that would allow these holdouts to support the budget bill if it was included in the package.
“I don’t think it can be done today,” Harris explained. “I think that there is a pathway forward that we can see.”
The manager’s amendment, which was released late Wednesday, included a provision that would move the start date for Medicaid work requirements from the beginning of 2029 to the end of 2026, as well as phasing out some clean energy subsidies earlier than previously outlined in the package.
Conservatives have also been pushing to change the rate at which the federal government pays states for Medicaid, which has sparked opposition from moderates who have warned against further cuts to the program.
Johnson reiterated earlier this week that the change had been “off the table for quite some time.” And, ahead of the meeting on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump stated that “we’re not doing anything cutting of anything meaningful,” adding that “the only thing we’re cutting on Medicaid is waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Before the manager’s amendment was released, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that the original version of the bill would add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. A new preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office found that it would raise the deficit by $3.8 trillion.
SALT conflict may be resolved
However, the legislation was opposed by more than just right-wing Republicans. Blue-state Republicans opposed a provision on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, and threatened to vote against it unless their demands were met.
Prior to the SALT deduction cap, imposed by the 2017 Trump tax law, taxpayers could deduct all of their state and local taxes from their federal taxes, which some policymakers believe primarily benefits wealthy homeowners in high-tax states such as New York and California. Others, however, noted that the $10,000 cap is increasingly affecting middle-class homeowners in areas where property taxes are rising.
Republicans who represent blue states opposed the package’s $30,000 cap and agreed to raise it to $40,000. The manager’s amendment included a provision raising the SALT deduction to $40,000 per household for incomes of up to $500,000.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said Wednesday night that with the increase, he believed all those who had opposed the provision were now on board.
Mr. Trump weighed in on the SALT issue Tuesday, claiming that he opposes raising the cap because Democratic governors in states such as New York, Illinois, and California would benefit, referring to them as the “biggest” recipients. However, after the moderates met with the speaker Tuesday evening, Johnson stated that they had “found a point of compromise.”
According to a senior White House official, Mr. Trump told the House GOP conference during the meeting that they should not let disagreements over the SALT cap derail the bill, and that they should not touch Medicaid except to address waste, fraud, and abuse, as well as cut benefits for noncitizens and implement work requirements. According to the official, Mr. Trump has also stated that he wants every Republican to vote “yes” on the bill, and that he is losing patience with those who are still opposed.