Republican holdouts on the Senate-passed version of the party’s “big, beautiful bill” are huddling with House GOP leaders, who are holding open a vote to move the legislation forward as they negotiate.
The procedural vote remained stuck more than 90 minutes after it was first called. Seven Republicans have yet to vote, and several of them are gathered in a room off the House floor where Speaker Mike Johnson and other top leaders have been shuffling in and out.
Placating those hard-line fiscal hawks could be the final test of whether Republicans can send the massive domestic-policy bill to President Donald Trump’s desk before his arbitrary July 4 deadline.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said his fellow holdouts on the megabill are deciding between “voting it down and sending it back [to the Senate] or getting our questions answered from the White House and supporting it.”
He added that discussions surround “what the administration can do” to implement the Senate bill in ways that would assuage the concerns conservatives have put forth.
White House Budget Director Russ Vought arrived at the room around 3:45 p.m. to walk through how the White House could find future spending cuts and how the administration plans implement the policies in the megabill — especially around rollbacks to federal food aid and clawbacks of clean-energy tax credits.
A key GOP holdout, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, said in a Fox News interview that he was “trying to go through the bill and understand it” after railing against a number of the Senate’s changes.
“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, but I still have concerns,” he said, citing “massive reservations about the Green New Scam subsidies and the overall spending levels.”
The Capitol huddle follows meetings earlier in the day at the White House where Trump participated.
“I think all of the momentum is in the right direction,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican who attended some of the White House meetings. “The president did a really good job of noticeably moving members toward ‘yes.’”
There is GOP angst about the Senate’s deeper cuts to Medicaid than were in the bill the House passed weeks ago. There are also concerns from House lawmakers about their districts being able to access funds specifically earmarked for rural hospitals — an issue that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Director Mehmet Oz tried to soothe at a White House meeting earlier in the day.
But the touchiest issue for the hard-liners concerns the additional deficits piled onto the Senate bill, which includes significantly larger tax cuts and additional spending, including the hospitals fund. They are accusing Johnson of violating a budget agreement that stipulated any additional tax cuts would be offset with new spending cuts.
“There were just a lot of promises they’re not living up to,” said a House Republican granted anonymity to describe the sensitive talks.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a Freedom Caucus member, said he thinks they will be able to “work something out” to clear the bill on Wednesday, but the path for that is not yet clear.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the only reason the vote was being held open for multiple hours was to accommodate lawmakers whose travel plans back to Washington were disrupted by thunderstorms.
“We need their votes, and they’re going to be here shortly and so when they get here within the next hour, we’ll come back, finish this vote, then go straight into the rule vote,” said Scalise.
But after two of the waylaid GOP members, Reps. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania and Neal Dunn of Florida arrived and voted — giving leaders enough votes to move forward — the vote was instead held open as negotiations with the final holdouts continued.
Benjamin Guggenheim, Lisa Kashinsky and Calen Razor contributed to this report.
