The House Budget Committee plans to try again Sunday night to advance the GOP’s expansive reconciliation package after four Republican dissenters torpedoed the measure at a markup Friday.
Within hours of the Budget panel’s 16-21 vote rejecting the bill earlier Friday, Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas, called for a second session on Sunday at 10 p.m. The announcement came shortly after promising members they could spend the weekend with their families and that the panel wouldn’t reconvene until Monday morning.
The decision to schedule a second vote so quickly — before House leaders could cut a deal with their detractors — underscored the determination of GOP leadership to keep the bill on an aggressive timeline, with a House floor vote expected next week.
Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., all had unresolved concerns about the draft bill and stood in the way of its approval on Friday morning.
A fifth GOP lawmaker and the panel’s vice chair — Lloyd K. Smucker of Pennsylvania — initially voted “yes” but later flipped his vote after the four other members voted against it. He later said he did so in order to bring up a motion to reconsider the package at a later time.
“You never know until you call the question where people stand, which is the reason I called for a vote,” Arrington told reporters after the markup. “You cannot debate things ad infinitum and achieve anything, including something this important.”
But the public rejection of President Donald Trump’s top legislative priority marked a clear setback for GOP leadership and appeared to add fuel to the internal warfare within the GOP conference over the size and shape of a package designed to deliver tax cuts, defense and border security funding, major spending cuts and more.
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., who voted to advance the bill, lashed out at the GOP dissenters after the markup.
“These are people who promised their constituents not to raise their taxes,” McClintock said. Instead, he said, they “just voted for the biggest tax increase in American history.”
Asked if the vote would embarrass party leadership, he said, “It’s an embarrassment to the individuals responsible for those votes. That’s for sure.”
But Arrington and others insisted they were “very close” to reaching a deal that would ease the concerns of the dissenters and allow the bill to move forward next week. Arrington said the vote served as an “action-forcing catalyst” that would spur both sides toward a deal after a weekend of negotiations.
“We will get there,” Smucker said. “I’m quite confident we’re going to get this done … We’re already very, very close and I think there’ll be continued discussions going forward.”
‘Something needs to change’
During Friday’s meeting, the committee had deferred roll call votes to the end of the session while negotiations took place behind the scenes, but to no avail.
Roy said he needed “serious” changes before agreeing to vote to move the legislation forward. During the markup, Roy pointed at a graph compiled by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reflecting that tax cuts and new spending would take effect more quickly than the budget savings in the legislation.
“I am a ‘no’ on the bill unless serious reforms are made today, tomorrow, Sunday. We are having conversations as we speak, but something needs to change, or you aren’t going to get my support,” Roy said.
Republican leaders could only afford to lose two members and still report the measure, even after Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, returned from paternity leave to bolster Republican leaders’ vote count.
Norman also said he is a “hard no” as he wants Medicaid work requirements to take effect sooner than the 2029 start laid out under the text of the bill, and wants green energy tax credits Democrats enacted in their 2022 budget reconciliation package to be repealed faster.
“If we’re going to continue to have . . . able-bodied Americans getting checks, illegal aliens getting checks, subsidies that go to corporations that shouldn’t get them, I’m out,” Norman said.
Clyde said he could not support the bill in its current form and said he needs changes to firearm regulations and taxes and a quicker start to Medicaid work requirements. Brecheen expressed concerns about the timeline for repealing the energy tax credits, and had questions about the overall budgetary impact of the package, absent a full score from the Congressional Budget Office which wasn’t ready yet.
After the vote, the House Freedom Caucus issued a statement that members are continuing to work toward an agreement that could be ready by next week.
“[W]e were making progress before the vote in the Budget Committee and will continue negotiations to further improve the reconciliation package,” the statement read. “We are not going anywhere and we will continue to work through the weekend.”
Behind-the-scenes talks
The largest outstanding issue remains the state and local tax deduction, with Republicans from New York leading the charge to raise the cap from the $30,000 level in the current bill. However, none of the leading voices to raise that cap sit on the Budget Committee, making the conservatives a bigger concern Friday morning.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said Friday morning that he had met with Norman and was in dialogue with the Trump administration. He said Republican leaders are still committed to passing the package on the floor next week.
“We’re working on some questions that Ralph and others have, and we’re going to be getting them answers as soon as we get them back from Trump administration,” Scalise said. “His questions were the same as Chip’s and a few others, and they are very specific questions, valid questions.”
Under the 1974 budget law, the Budget Committee is not allowed to make changes to the bill at this stage. But the law requires that the panel “shall report” the legislation to the full House.
The Rules Committee could still make the requisite changes and send the measure to the floor. But even if it passes, skipping a Budget vote to report the measure, or continued rejection in the Budget panel, could strip the measure from its filibuster-proof reconciliation privilege in the Senate.
President Donald Trump tried to tip the scales in favor of the bill Friday morning, saying that Republicans “MUST UNITE” behind the measure.
“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Norman said he saw Trump’s post, and shares his desire to get the package enacted. But he said he is still waiting for commitments on changes that address his concerns from GOP leaders.
“They’re going to need to recess,” Norman said during a break, before the vote Friday. “If they call for a vote now, it’s not going to end well. If they recess, we are working through it.”
Promises kept?
In theory, if weekend negotiations go well, Budget could reconvene Sunday and report the bill out. That would keep the package basically on schedule, with Rules able to meet on Monday provided they have a manager’s amendment ready to go.
If GOP leaders are able to address concerns that way — and lose no more than three votes on the floor — the House could still bring the measure up for a vote later next week, maintaining the schedule Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has pledged.
Arrington said the bill under consideration would deliver on the promises that Trump ran on.
“Today, let’s make good on the American people’s mandate, by taking President Trump’s America First vision and this America first policy agenda, and making them a reality in the lives of our fellow citizens,” he said during Friday’s markup.
The measure would extend and expand trillions of dollars’ worth of tax cuts; fund a military and border security buildup; raise the debt limit; loosen oil and gas drilling restrictions; and cut mandatory spending on programs like Medicaid, student loans and food stamps.
House Budget ranking member Brendan F. Boyle, D-Pa., said the legislation would disproportionately aid billionaires at the expense of Medicaid recipients.
“It is the biggest tax cuts for billionaires in American history, paid for by throwing 13.7 million Americans off their health care coverage,” Boyle said, citing the Congressional Budget Office.
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