GOP leaders work to convince House holdouts on budget package

WASHINGTON — Republicans were scrambling Wednesday to salvage their “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill amid a revolt from conservatives over the measure’s growing price tag.

President Donald Trump and Republican leadership were busy buttonholing members from across the conference’s political spectrum, with centrists also still wary of deeper cuts to Medicaid that came over from the Senate Tuesday than were in the House-passed bill.

Procedural votes on the rule for floor debate were held open more than two hours as House leaders tried to persuade members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus to back the measure. After two hours had passed, the ranks of members thinned in the chamber while leaders huddled with conservative holdouts in a nearby room and Democrats began occasional shouts seeking “regular order.”

As the arm-twisting continued and a procedural vote held open, the House chamber was virtually deserted by 3:15 p.m. Members were told they could go back to their offices for about an hour.

House Republicans got over one initial procedural hurdle to passing the bill on Wednesday morning, but they were far from in the clear as leadership and the White House appeared well short of the votes needed to bring the measure to the floor.

While the vote was being held open, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said the delay could last a lot longer as the whip effort continued.

“It’ll be ongoing meetings. The votes are going to be held up. They’ll keep that open for as long as it takes,” he said.

Norman suggested part of the pitch from the White House and GOP leaders was that problems that holdouts have could be fixed via subsequent legislation or executive actions.

“That’s what we’re getting a handle over the next couple hours,” he said.

The House agreed to consider the rule for floor debate on a narrow 212-211 vote after the vote was held open for about 90 minutes. Several lawmakers were delayed getting back to the Capitol due to weather, while others were at the White House being lobbied to back the measure.

No GOP lawmakers voted against the “question of consideration” of the rule, which would allow no amendments and limit debate to one hour. But on that rule vote itself, the whip count was clearly in bad shape.

‘House of Lords’

That could change after some in-person face time with Trump, who was weighing in with all his persuasive powers to woo holdouts from the right and center of the House GOP on Wednesday.

But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, telegraphed earlier that leadership lacked the votes to adopt the rule, which would effectively table the bill for now.

“Only in Washington is the Senate so arrogant, the House of Lords, that they say, ‘Oh well, you can’t change this.’ Every legislative body in the world does ping-pong, conferences, and other ways to go about it,” Roy said Wednesday morning. “How about we send it back to them and we say ‘take it or leave it?'”

GOP leaders can only lose three Republican votes assuming full attendance and still prevail on party-line questions. The chamber ended up closer to full attendance, after nine members were absent from the previous procedural vote — eight Republicans and one Democrat.

Among the earlier absentees was Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., who’s been railing against the bill on social media. “The sole promise politicians have successfully enacted: screw the taxpayer and bankrupt the country,” he wrote Tuesday on the social platform X.

Roy and Norman, both Freedom Caucus members, are already on record opposing the rule, and the bill, from their votes in the Rules Committee late Tuesday. The resolution squeaked through on a party-line 7-6 vote in committee.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., said Wednesday he planned to vote against the rule on the floor. His caucus circulated a list of grievances with the Senate changes before the rule vote on Wednesday, from the overall cost to “excessive pork for Alaska and Hawaii” — a reference to the lengths Senate GOP leaders had to go to woo Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

‘Best closer in the business’

Trump was meeting with members of the Freedom Caucus as well as party moderates at the White House on Wednesday, including Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who was seen entering the West Wing.

“The president is the best closer in the business, and he got a lot of members to yes in that meeting,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., who attended the meeting at the White House on Wednesday. “He is hour by hour moving members in the right direction.”

Passage of the bill in a closely divided Congress would mark a big victory for Trump and GOP leaders because it includes most of the president’s agenda for his second term. It would extend expiring tax cuts from the 2017 tax code overhaul and offer new tax breaks, including on tips and overtime pay.

It would pump about $320 billion into border enforcement and military priorities. And it would make deep cuts to the social safety net, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps. It also would increase the nation’s $36.1 trillion debt ceiling by $5 trillion — big enough to get past next year’s midterm elections.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a moderate from a Democratic-leaning district who is retiring and has expressed concerns about the Senate package, said he would vote for it.

“I’d love to send it back for a couple of reasons,” Bacon said, contending that the House’s Medicaid language was “better” than the Senate’s but that “I don’t think it’s going to happen. At some point, you got to weigh the pros versus the cons, and I weigh not raising taxes on people probably the highest.”

Procedural snafu

GOP leaders first needed to fix a mistake in the rule that left out the customary language ordering the previous question on the bill, which Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., offered an amendment to fix.

Without Foxx’s amendment to the rule, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., would lose the ability to postpone a vote on the underlying bill — if needed to shore up the whip count — for more than two legislative days. The mistake cut both ways, since if not fixed, it would allow Democrats to drag out debate with additional procedural motions.

But even that seemingly noncontroversial fix, at least for Republicans, was proving troublesome. With the vote on Foxx’s amendment being held open for over an hour, GOP leaders were still working over holdouts off the floor.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., chalked up part of the problem to member absences, given weather-related flight delays.

“We’re waiting on some members that are on their way here, had flights canceled,” he said. “They’re finding a way to get here. We need them.”

Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., asked the chair if “it’s customary” for a vote to be held open more than an hour. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., presiding over the chamber, replied: “It’s not customary, but the chair is not a historian.”

During the delay, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought was seeing going in to meet with recalcitrant members.

GOP lawmakers who hadn’t yet voted on the Foxx amendment after an hour, and were seen in and out of the speaker’s ceremonial room off the floor, included: Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Andrew Clyde of Georgia; Neal Dunn of Florida; Andy Ogles of Tennessee; and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Illinois Rep. Mary Miller was also seen leaving the meeting.

Time is not on Johnson’s side, regardless of what happens with the procedural votes.

Johnson called members back to town from their scheduled recess to try to deliver the package to Trump’s desk before the July Fourth holiday. The vote comes one day after the Senate passed an amended version of the bill that adds $110 billion to its price tag over 10 years, according to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, for a total of nearly $3.4 trillion.

The Freedom Caucus pointed out that figure was $760 billion more than the framework their members agreed to with GOP leaders in exchange for their votes on the initial House-passed bill.

“We’ve still had a lot of members that had questions about the changes that the Senate made,” Scalise said Wednesday morning. “That’s to be expected. When you talk to members, there’s some that still are holding out for something different. But at the end of the day, they know this is probably as good as we’re going to get. It’s a really good bill.”

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(Olivia M. Bridges, Jessie Hellmann, Paul M. Krawzak, Hunter Savery, Nina Heller, Daniel Hillburn, Aidan Quigley and John T. Bennett contributed to this report.)