Conservative spending hawks in the House are worried about changes to the bill full of President Trump's priorities that Republicans in the Senate are eyeing — and they may soon face a moment of reckoning.
Under heavy pressure from Trump and his MAGA base, GOP spending hawks held their noses and voted last month to move the bill through the House, hoping the Senate would shift the massive package closer to being deficit-neutral.
Instead, the opposite is now expected to happen, as moderate GOP senators leery of the House Medicaid cuts and efforts to phase out green energy subsidies seek to restore some of those benefit programs, potentially making the bill even more costly than the House version. With just a slim Senate majority, GOP Leader John Thune (S.D.) will need the support of those moderates if he hopes to pass the bill.
Such a scenario would confront House conservatives with an agonizing decision.
If they stand on principle and oppose the package over deficit concerns, they would sink legislation that combines virtually all of Trump’s domestic policy goals and campaign promises, including an immigration crackdown and sweeping tax cuts Republicans consider must-pass items.
If they support the package to lend Trump a huge win, they would be voting to grow the same deficit spending they’ve characterized as an existential threat to the nation’s future well-being.
As the bill was sent to the Senate, Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) said he almost had no choice but to support the package — “This bill was so important, the tax cuts had to get through,” he said — while lamenting the deficit spending that will pile trillions of dollars onto the national debt for years to come.
“The deficit is going to remain at least where it is, I believe — the numbers show it. And that means that we're going from $36 trillion to $56 trillion, something like that, unless we get inordinate growth out of this bill, which I certainly hope that we do,” Self said.
“But the consequences of this bill will add to the debt. And if we don't get the bond market under control, then we're going to be paying a whole lot of money.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a prominent spending hawk, was even more forceful, saying GOP senators “can't unwind what we achieved” in the House or the bill would have a tough path upon its return to the lower chamber.
“And those are going to be red lines,” he warned.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the head of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is voicing concerns that the House bill front-loads higher deficit spending in the first five years, pushing the steepest cuts to the final half of the 10-year spending window. He says that’s a case of Congress punting the hard choices to the future — a grievance that’s also been aired by Elon Musk, who had led Trump’s efforts to slash government spending in the early months of his second term.
“I share Mr. Musk's concerns about the short-term adverse effect on the federal deficit,” Harris wrote on the social platform X last week. “Debt markets remain concerned about US total debt and annual deficits.”
Since then, the criticism has only ratcheted up. Musk, days out of his short tenure at the White House — a stretch where he was a near-constant figure beside Trump — trashed the bill on X Tuesday afternoon, calling it “a disgusting abomination.”
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), one of two Republicans who voted against the bill in the House, piled on, writing: “He’s right.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has sought to ease the concerns within his own party, saying Tuesday that Musk’s assessment is “terribly wrong.” Johnson has insisted that the official scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — who have estimated the House bill will increase budget deficits by trillions of dollars over a decade — are wildly off base. When you consider economic growth that will accompany the tax cuts, he says, the bill “is going to reduce the deficit.”
“The CBO sometimes gets projections correct, but they’re always off every single time when they project economic growth,” Johnson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Yet economists of all stripes have long disputed the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves, and House conservatives like Roy have taken their own leadership to task for claiming otherwise. Those voices blame both parties for creating the nation’s debt, which is soon to hit $37 trillion.
“I sure hope the growth comes through, because we need the growth,” Self said.
It remains unclear, however, if the House spending hawks will enforce their own red lines on deficit spending. Indeed, some suggested it’s more important to rally behind the party.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said it “bothers” him that Republicans are piling trillions of dollars onto the debt. But in the end, he said the tax cuts were too important to let expire, and he didn’t want to give a win to Democrats — a group he characterizes as un-American.
“It was the right thing to do,” he said as the bill went to the Senate. “At the end of the day, if you side with the left — it's a socialistic group that hates this country, to be honest with you."
The weighing of options among House deficit hawks comes as the Senate is getting its turn with the “big, beautiful bill,” with Republicans eyeing a series of changes that could make or break support in the lower chamber when the measure returns.
The deliberations feature similar divisions that accompanied the House debate: Hard-liners want steeper spending cuts, centrists are pushing to water down Medicaid changes, and those in the middle want a more calculated rollback of green-energy tax credits approved by Democrats in 2022.
Johnson has publicly and privately urged his Senate counterparts to make as few changes as possible to the bill, underscoring the importance of maintaining the tenuous equilibrium of support in the House.
Trump, however, has given the upper chamber full range, telling reporters last month: “I want the Senate and the senators to make the changes they want. It will go back to the House and we’ll see if we can get them.”
“In some cases, the changes may be something I’d agree with, to be honest,” he continued. “I think it’s going to get there. … I think they are going to have changes. Some will be minor, some will be fairly significant.”
In the meantime, deficit hawks are focusing their attention on a package to claw back billions of dollars in federal funding, marking the chamber’s first attempt at codifying the cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The White House sent the $9.4 billion measure — commonly referred to as a rescissions package — to the House on Tuesday.
The package targets the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS, in addition to the United States Agency for International Development — all of which were impacted by DOGE. Johnson is expected to move it through the chamber on a speedy timeline.
Deficit hawks — especially those in the conservative House Freedom Caucus — are touting the legislation as a “critical” step forward. But the just more than $9 billion price tag pales in comparison to the Trump agenda bill’s multitrillion-dollar cost, underscoring how far they are from their deficit-neutrality goals.
Despite the lingering debates, Johnson is still pushing the merits of the bill — and sticking with his July 4 deadline, even with a colossal amount of work to do.
“We have to pass this legislation,” Johnson said Tuesday. “The Senate is doing some good, thoughtful, deliberative work right now, we’re looking forward to moving it through the process, and the president is very much looking forward to signing that into law by Independence Day.”
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