Washington — House Republicans plan to move ahead with a vote this week on the legislation containing President Trump’s second term agenda. But fractures in the GOP conference appeared to persist over the weekend, despite the legislation’s movement out of committee, throwing its passage into question.
“There’s a lot more work to do,” House Speaker Mike Johson told reporters late Sunday. “But I’m looking forward to very thoughtful discussions, very productive discussions, over the next few days — and I’m absolutely convinced we’re going to get this in final form and pass it.”
After the final three committees advanced their portions of the massive legislative package last week, a handful of conservative hardliners on the House Budget Committee blocked the package from moving forward Friday. The setback prompted work through the weekend to negotiate with the holdouts, who ultimately allowed the legislation to advance late Sunday.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington called it a “critical step,” while acknowledging that deliberations are continuing, with disagreements remaining on a cap on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, and on when Medicaid work requirements would take effect. But Arrington said the vote to advance the legislation Sunday “is a sign that people are confident that these things will be resolved.”
Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, two of the conservative holdouts, celebrated a change made Sunday that would remove delays from the Medicaid work requirements, since conservatives opposed the original plan, which would have delayed until 2029 work requirements for childless Medicaid recipients without disabilities. But Roy noted in a post on social media that “the bill does not yet meet the moment,” pointing to remaining sticking points on cutting clean energy subsidies implemented under the Biden administration and cuts to the federal share of payments for Medicaid.
Johnson suggested that he and the conservatives had agreed to “minor modifications” over the weekend. The speaker is walking a tightrope between the hardliners demanding more cuts and moderates who are reluctant to slash Medicaid, while a number of Republicans who represent blue states have also threatened to withhold their votes unless their demands are met on SALT, among other divisions.
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The legislation is set to go before the House Rules Committee on Wednesday at 1 a.m., where any changes to the legislation would be made. But Roy and Norman also sit on the Rules Committee and could raise a final hurdle there ahead of the full House vote. Should the package advance out of the Rules Committee, it would tee up a vote on the package on Thursday, before lawmakers are set to leave town for the Memorial Day recess.
As Republican leadership irons out the remaining issues, President Trump is expected to continue to pressure Republicans to get the bill passed this week, as he did on Friday on social media. But whether the White House intervenes more forcefully by meeting with key holdouts or making calls to individual members remains to be seen.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing Monday morning that it’s “absolutely essential that Republicans unite behind the one big, beautiful bill, and deliver on President Trump’s agenda,” adding, “there is no time to waste.”
Meanwhile, the legislation is expected to face some resistance in the Senate, where a number of Republicans have warned that should the House pass the bill, the upper chamber will try to make changes.
Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, told reporters late last week that the House bill “would not pass in the Senate, and I think there’s plenty of us that would vote against it.” And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, told reporters that “we’ve assumed all along that the Senate would have its input on this.”
Johnson said on Fox News Sunday that “the package that we send over there will be one that was very carefully negotiated and delicately balanced, and we hope that they don’t make many modifications to it because that will ensure its passage quickly.”
Beyond the self-imposed deadlines, the inclusion of a debt limit increase in the package has added urgency to getting the legislation to the president’s desk. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged Congress earlier this month to address the debt limit by mid July, warning that the U.S. could be unable to pay its bills as soon as August without action. And top administration and congressional leaders have circled July 4 as the deadline to get the package to the president desk.
“We’ve got to get this done and get it to the president’s desk by that big celebration on Independence Day,” Johnson said. “I’m convinced that we can.”
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