House GOP leadership is counting on the White House to bear the brunt of the effort to sway hard-line members of the House Freedom Caucus who are threatening to vote against the Republican megabill.
“The sense is the White House needs to deliver the Freedom Caucus — that’s the project of the day,” said one person close to leadership, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking.
The House conservatives are concerned that the Senate-passed legislation would add, according to their estimates, more than $600 billion to the deficit as compared to the bill most of them supported in May. The Senate version, they argue, violates a House budget framework negotiated with Speaker Mike Johnson that links the amount of tax cuts in the bill to the aggregate amount of spending cuts
Johnson will be hard-pressed to address the hard-liners’ concerns, given his goal of passing the Senate bill intact without changes that would necessitate another trip across the Capitol and weeks of delays. The White House, the thinking goes, is better situated to discuss executive orders and potential future legislation that could address their concerns.
Meanwhile, a separate group of GOP moderates in states like Pennsylvania, New York and North Carolina are concerned about more stringent cuts to state provider taxes that fund Medicaid.
The moderates are meeting Wednesday morning with President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss their concerns. Trump is also expected to meet today with fiscal hawks.
Moderates in battleground districts, including Reps. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) and Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa), wrote a letter to Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressing concerns about the Medicaid cuts in late June.
Two members who signed the letter, Reps. David Valadao (R-Calif.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), declined to respond to questions about the Medicaid cuts Wednesday morning before driving away from the Capitol.
