Key GOP holdouts held firm against approval of a budget framework for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” domestic policy bill even as the president continued working to quell the revolt from House fiscal hawks.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said he was “not going to change my vote” and predicted the budget vote would fail if it came to the floor.
“The Senate needs to be willing to do what the House was willing to do, which is cut spending,” he said Wednesday morning. Burlison said he had met with White House staff on the issue.
Meanwhile, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a vocal leader of the holdout bloc, said in a Wednesday Rules Committee meeting that he would support bringing the budget plan to a final vote but would oppose it on the floor.
Roy, who attended a White House meeting with Trump on Tuesday, told his fellow Republicans to “stop making up math.”
“Stop lying to the American people that you can just magically put something on a board and say, ‘Oh, it all pays for itself.’ It doesn’t,” he said. “Get an eraser and a pencil, and put it out on paper and come show me — and that message from me goes to the White House, to my Senate Republican colleagues and to the leadership on this side of the aisle. Come show me the math.”
Both comments came after Trump on Tuesday night addressed lawmakers and urged them to “stop grandstanding” and “close your eyes and get there.” And on Wednesday morning, he continued to crank up the pressure in a series of social media posts.
“It is IMPERATIVE that Republicans in the House pass the Tax Cut Bill, NOW!” he said in one post.
Trump’s intense whip effort comes after he failed to move Roy and several other hard-liners in Tuesday’s White House meeting. Throughout his remarks to House Republicans at the annual NRCC dinner Tuesday evening, the president demanded that the fiscal hawks fall in line.
“In case there are a couple of Republicans out there [in opposition], you just got to get there,” he said. “It’s a phenomenal bill.”
Administration officials are intensely targeting some of the holdouts, continuing to call them to warn that opposing the plan could tank tariff-wary markets further and damage the president’s agenda, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the whip effort.
House GOP leaders are planning to try to muscle the budget plan across the floor Wednesday evening. The Rules Committee is now meeting to set up final consideration of the bill while leaders work to flip the opposition and ask Trump to lean on remaining holdouts.
Speaker Mike Johnson projected confidence heading onto the floor: “We’ll have the votes today at some point,” he said. Asked if he expected Trump to call the holdouts, he said the president had offered to but “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
