President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” survived a key hurdle in the House of Representatives on Sunday night, putting it one step closer to a chamber-wide vote later this week.
It comes after a rebellion by four House conservatives upended plans to advance the bill on Friday morning.
Lawmakers on the House Budget Committee were summoned back to Washington for a 10 p.m. meeting to vote on advancing the legislation. It passed the panel in a nearly party-line vote, 17 to 16, with four Republicans voting “present.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made a surprise appearance in the committee room shortly before the vote began, telling reporters, “We think this is going to go well tonight. We’re about to find out.”
He said there would likely be “minor modifications” to the final bill before disappearing into a back room with the four GOP holdouts who sunk the bill on Friday morning.
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Johnson spoke to reporters again just before the vote began.
“I think what is about to happen here is that every member, every Republican member, will give a vote that allows us to proceed forward, and we count that as a big win tonight,” he said.
The speaker said he expects to have “productive discussions” with various factions of the House GOP, adding, “I am absolutely convinced we’re going to get this in final form and pass it in accordance with our original deadline.”
It comes after a rebellion by four conservative House Freedom Caucus members on the committee blocked the bill from advancing on Friday, with the fiscal hawks seeking assurances that stricter crackdowns on Medicaid and green energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) would be in the final bill before a House-wide vote.
The four conservatives voted “present” in an effort to move discussions forward on Sunday night.
Advancing the legislation through the House Budget Committee is a largely procedural move. Lawmakers have signaled that some changes will be introduced as amendments in the House Rules Committee, the final gatekeeper before a House-wide vote, sometime early this week.
Notably, two of the Budget Committee fiscal hawks who demanded further changes – Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C. – also sit on the House Rules Committee.
“In an effort to move this bill forward, I’m excited about the changes we’ve made. And I will vote present,” Norman said as voting began.
The House Budget Committee passed a framework earlier this year with “instructions” for various other committees to enact Trump policies under their jurisdictions.
Following House and Senate-wide votes on their frameworks, House committees began crafting those policies, which have now been put back together into the massive bill the House Budget Committee advanced on Sunday night.
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Republicans are working to pass Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party controlling both Congress and the White House to pass vast pieces of legislation while completely sidelining the minority – in this case, Democrats.
It does so by lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, lining up with the House’s own simple majority. The legislation must adhere to a specific set of rules, however, including only items related to federal spending, tax, and the national debt.
Trump is having Republicans use the legislation to enact his campaign promises on tax cuts, immigration, energy, defense, and raising the debt limit.
And while quelling Friday’s GOP mutiny is a victory for House Republican leaders, lawmakers will still have to sit through high-stakes negotiations on any changes made to the bill before the House Rules Committee considers it.
Conservatives are opposed to aspects of the legislation’s crackdown on Medicaid, which Republicans have said they are only trimming for waste, fraud, and abuse. But Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied people are not set to kick in until 2029, and conservatives have argued that it was a large window of time for those changes to be undone, among other concerns.
They’re also pushing for a more aggressive effort to repeal green energy tax subsidies passed in the former Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The respective pushes have pitted them against moderates wary of significant Medicaid cuts, and Republican lawmakers whose districts have businesses that have benefited from the tax relief.
Meanwhile, moderates in high-cost-of-living areas have also pushed for larger state and local tax (SALT) deduction caps, which red state Republicans have largely dismissed as subsidies to high-tax blue states.
The Republicans in those seats, however, have argued that it’s an existential issue for their districts, where GOP victories were critical to winning and holding the House majority.
But even after it passes the House, Republicans there likely won’t be done with the “big, beautiful bill” – Republican senators have already signaled they are likely going to make changes to the bill.
Johnson said on Fox News Sunday that House and Senate leaders were “in close coordination” on the final product, adding, “we hope that they don’t make many modifications to it.”
Any changes will have to go through the House again; identical bills must pass both chambers before getting signed into law by Trump.
Republican leaders have said they hope to get a bill on the president’s desk by Fourth of July.
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