The House Budget Committee is charging ahead with a key vote on the party’s package combining President Trump’s legislative priorities — even as a cohort of hardline conservatives are vowing to block it from moving forward.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the panel not only will meet on Friday to compile the various pieces of Trump’s domestic agenda, but he predicted it will pass.
“We're having a Budget Committee meeting tomorrow. That's the plan,” Johnson told reporters. “It'll get out of Budget. I'm confident.”
Standing in his way, however, are at least two GOP members of that committee — Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) — who had huddled with Johnson in a cloak room just off the chamber floor Thursday evening and told the Speaker they intend to vote no on the legislation in its current form.
"Chip and I are voting against it. And all the Democrats are going to vote against it,” Norman said afterward. “You've got to have a good product, and the deficit — we're not here to add to the deficit. And this does nothing to do that."
Given the current partisan ratio on the Budget Committee — and an absence from Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), who is at home for the birth of his first son — those two GOP defections would be enough to block the bill. And others are likely to join the holdouts.
Before the meeting on the floor, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said he would vote against the bill in committee and Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) said he was “not a yes” — positions that, if they remain post-huddle, would further complicate leadership’s changes of muscling the measure through the panel.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told The Hill he is undecided, and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) told reporters “we’re still thinking about it” when asked how he would vote on the bill, which he called “flawed.”
Norman said the Budget Committee holdouts and leadership are expected to hold another conversation, by phone, later Thursday night. He’s said leadership has to commit to three changes to the current legislation if they want his vote.
First, they have to accelerate Medicaid work requirements so they take effect immediately, not in 2029, as the current bill dictates.
Second, they have to expedite the rollback of green-energy tax credits established under the Biden administration.
And third, they have to speed up the benefit prohibitions for those people living in the country illegally.
“You do those three things, we’ll get it through,” Norman said.
“There’s a lot of ways we can kind of work through this, and right now we’re still working through it,” Roy told reporters. “I wouldn’t advise voting on this tomorrow until we get some changes.”
Leadership already appears to be making moves. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters earlier Thursday afternoon they “absolutely” intend to change the bill to accelerate new Medicaid work requirements. And Johnson suggested leadership is working toward that goal.
But that alone will not do the trick. Shortly after Scalise’s announcement — but before his meeting with Johnson — Norman said expediting the Medicaid work requirements was not enough.
Trump has yet to exert much pressure on the debate.
Johnson said he's talked with Trump to update him on negotiations since the president went to the Middle East, but has not asked for his help in lobbying the holdouts.
“He's excited about our forward progress, and I keep him apprised of the developments,” Johnson said. “He's in good spirits, and we're in good spirits."
While Johnson works to put out the rising rebellion on the right, he is similarly trying to placate moderate Republicans from high-tax blue states who are pushing to increase the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — which hardliners are against.
The GOP’s bill includes a $30,000 SALT deduction cap for individuals making $400,000 or less — triple the $10,000 deduction cap in current law — but Republicans in the SALT Caucus have called for a higher number, planning leadership’s proposal.
“The latest proposal that was tucked into the Ways and Means bill that has a value of SALT about $225 billion — that's not enough,” said Rep. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.). “Unlimited SALT costs $1.3 trillion.
“We're not asking for unlimited, but we are asking for our fair share."
Hiking up the deduction cap, however, would spark problems on the right. Hardline conservatives are demanding that any increase in the cap must be paid for — promoting leadership to find more places for spending cuts, which could lead to more opposition among moderates.
“Is SALT going to be raised from 10 to 30, or is it going to be raised to 100? And how is it going to be paid for?” Norman said. “We've still got a spending problem. We've got a deficit problem. And we've got to address it.”
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