The House GOP Holdouts Stalling Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
- - - The House GOP Holdouts Stalling Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Nik PopliJuly 3, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R, La.) is surrounded by security and staff as he heads to the House Chamber for a procedural vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the U.S. Capitol on July 2, 2025. Credit - Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday found himself in an all-too-familiar position: scrambling to win over a bloc of Republican holdouts to prevent a signature piece of President Donald Trump's agenda from collapsing on the House floor—and once again, needing Trump to help close the deal.
The top House Republican spent the day behind closed doors with about a dozen wavering lawmakers after several of his members shuttled to the White House to raise complaints directly with Trump about the revised "big, beautiful bill" that the Senate passed a day earlier. Fiscal hawks warned that the Senate's version of the sweeping tax and spending bill adds too much to the national debt, while more centrist Republicans expressed concern about steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps that would harm their constituents.
"We can't make everyone 100% happy," Johnson told reporters of the negotiations between different factions of his party. "Never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good."
But by Wednesday evening, enough House Republicans remained opposed to the Senate's version of the legislation to effectively stall, at least for the moment, the bill's passage in the lower chamber, where Speaker Johnson can afford to lose no more than three votes.
Moments after Trump posted on Truth Social that "the Republican House Majority is UNITED" and "ready to vote tonight," his bill failed to muster enough votes on a procedural measure that would have allowed Republicans to bring it to the floor for final passage.
At least five Republicans—Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Keith Self of Texas, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana—joined all the Democrats in voting against the "rule" amendment by Wednesday night, as the vote remained open into Thursday morning with eight other Republicans still to vote.
With the late-night voting at a seeming standstill, Speaker Johnson said he was prepared to wait in an attempt to convince members to switch their votes. "I'll keep it open for as long as it takes to make sure we've got everybody here and accounted for and all the questions answered," he said shortly before 11 p.m. on Fox News.
"What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT'S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!" Trump posted on Truth Social just after midnight.
Read More: The 'Big Beautiful Bill' Is Massively Unpopular and Democrats Plan to Keep It That Way
The tense rule vote underscores just how fragile the coalition behind the bill remains—and how difficult it has been for Johnson to manage competing demands within his narrow majority.
"The bill is not going to pass today," said Rep. Jason Smith, an Ohio Republican who chairs the powerful Ways and Means committee, ahead of the rule vote. House leaders could bring the procedural vote back to the floor later Thursday, but any further delays or changes to the bill would almost certainly blow past Trump's July 4 deadline.
The legislation, which just barely passed the Senate on Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance would broadly fund many of Trump's biggest priorities of his second term: extending his 2017 tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year; eliminating taxes on tips and overtime; and providing a large funding boost to his immigration and border policies. To offset some of those costs, the bill also includes deep spending cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance and slashes green energy tax credits.
But House Republicans are being asked to quickly vote on a bill that was just altered by the Senate in ways that fiscal hawks argue irresponsibly expands the national debt and breaches the red lines they laid out months ago. The Senate's bill also includes more drastic policy shifts on Medicaid that centrists warn could put them at risk of losing their seats if they vote in favor of the changes.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Senate version of the bill would increase the deficit by $3.4 trillion, which is about $1 trillion more than the bill the House previously passed in May. The Senate's proposed changes to Medicaid would also leave about 12 million people without insurance by 2034, the report said, compared with 11 million people in the House version.
Some deficit hawks from the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which includes Clyde and Self who voted against the procedural measure Wednesday night, have said that they would block the bill if changes aren't made. The group released a memo earlier Wednesday that tore into what it called the "failures" of the Senate's bill, taking aim at its deficit increase and a carveout that helped swing Alaska's Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski by delaying food stamp cuts in states with high error rates, among other new provisions.
Trump on Wednesday met with members of the House Freedom Caucus and moderate Republicans, urging both sides to get on board and send the legislation to his desk before Friday. Trump brought in Dr. Mehmet Oz, who leads the agency in charge of Medicaid, to downplay concerns about Medicaid cuts and related portions of the Senate GOP bill, such as provisions that would impact provider taxes that help fund the low-income health insurance program and increase a fund for rural hospitals. Vance was also present during the meetings.
"The President from day one has been our best closer, and he's going to continue to be through today," said House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Trump's involvement in the discussions.
Some signs soon emerged that critics were starting to come around. Rep. Ralph Norman, who previously lambasted the Senate bill and said he would vote against it, sounded slightly more positive after the meeting. "I can't tell you I'm a yes, I can't tell you I'm a no," the South Carolina Republican told reporters. "The meeting was very helpful." Hours later, Norman voted yes on the rule vote and signaled that he would also vote in favor of the bill. "We found out things that are going to happen, which will affect the whole country in a good way," he said.
But several sticking points remained. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a key GOP holdout who did not cast his vote on the rule before midnight, said earlier Wednesday that he was still trying to go through the bill and understand a number of the Senate's changes to Medicaid provisions before deciding how to vote. "I will note that I have now gotten a little bit more information on some of the Medicaid stuff that I feel like it's a little bit better than I originally anticipated," he said in a Fox News interview. "But I still have concerns."
Write to Nik Popli at [email protected].
Source: AOL General News
