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President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda temporarily ground to a halt in the House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon.
Plans for an early afternoon vote to begin debate on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” slipped away as both conservative concerns and weather delays led to issues in passing two procedural votes ahead of the critical measure.
It’s not clear if the key vote will proceed today at this point. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., one of the bill’s biggest critics, told reporters a vote was still “possible.”
“No, not yet,” he said when asked if he was getting what he needed from the White House to support the measure. “But the evening is so young.”
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House GOP leaders had hoped to vote to begin debate on the vast tax and immigration bill, a maneuver known as a “rule vote,” with the goal of teeing up a vote on the legislation’s final passage by late Wednesday or early Thursday at the latest.
The president has directed Republicans to get a bill to his desk for a signature by Fourth of July, though he’s suggested in some recent comments that he would not mind a few days’ delay.
The rule vote was meant to be the third in an early afternoon series of three votes. As of early evening Wednesday, that vote is still being held open – and the House floor effectively paralyzed.
Lawmakers who expected a vote were told to return to their offices to await further instructions.
Multiple House Freedom Caucus members who left a meeting next to the House floor declined to comment on what they discussed, but several had made clear in recent days that they have serious issues with the Senate’s version of Trump’s agenda bill.
The mammoth piece of legislation includes Trump’s agenda on tax, the border, energy, defense, and the national debt.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought was seen briefly entering and exiting the room where the fiscal hawks were gathered.
He said little to reporters other than announcing they were “making good progress” on his way out of the room.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, suggested that conservatives were speaking with the Trump administration about how Republicans could make up for what they saw as deficiencies in the current version of the bill.
Fiscal hawks were angered by last-minute moves made to placate Senate GOP moderates who were uneasy about the bill’s near-immediate phase-out of most green energy tax subsidies in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
They’ve also argued the Senate’s bill would add more to the federal deficit than the House’s earlier version, though Senate Republicans have pushed back.
“We were not happy with what the Senate produced. We thought there was a path forward as of late last week, even though I had concerns in public about them, but then they jammed it through at the last minute in a way that, you know, we’re not overly excited about,” Roy said. “So now we’re trying to understand what our options are from this point.”
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Others, like Reps. Keith Self, R-Texas, and Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., declined to comment about the meeting to reporters.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus but had some concerns about the bill, told reporters when leaving the meeting, “I’m just waiting to see what’s going on honestly, everybody’s just discussing what’s going on and trying to get to some [resolution].”
Burchett told reporters earlier that he was leaning in favor of voting to debate the bill.
But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can afford just three defections to still pass the bill along party lines.
He told reporters, “We’re going to get there tonight.”
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