The House Budget Committee voted against advancing the GOP’s party-line tax and spending package Friday thanks to ongoing opposition from hard-line conservatives.
The 21-16 vote, with five Republicans joining all panel Democrats in opposition, is not the final word on the megabill; House GOP leaders plan to continue private talks with the reluctant Republicans and the White House over the weekend in hopes of resurrecting the package next week.
But it is an undeniable setback for Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republicans who want the sprawling package advanced through the House by the end of next week, when members are set to leave Washington for a week-long recess.
Now “we fall back and regroup,” said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). “I think it was important to get everyone on the record.”
Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said there would be no further action in the panel until next week upon gaveling the vote closed Friday: “Godspeed and safe travels,” he told members planning to leave Washington for the weekend.
To placate hard-right members on the panel, GOP leaders are entertaining substantial changes to the bill as they try to bring the megabill to the House floor next week. Measures under discussion include enforcing work requirements on Medicaid recipients earlier than the 2029 deadline in
the bill and immediately revoking Medicaid benefits from undocumented immigrants.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a key holdout who voted no during the markup Friday, said “this bill falls profoundly short.”
“It does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits,” Roy said. “The fact of the matter is this bill has back-loaded savings and has front-loaded spending. … And I’m not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory when this is the Budget Committee. This is the Budget Committee!”
Republican leaders are talking to the White House about imposing Medicaid work requirements in 2027 or earlier, amid reluctance among White House officials to enforce those mandates before 2029, when President Donald Trump’s second term ends.
Reps. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania also opposed advancing the bill Friday. Smucker said he supports the legislation but voted no in order to reconsider the bill when the panel later reconvenes.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a brief interview Friday morning that White House officials “recognize that our members want to see this moved quicker. They do too. And we’re going to get there.”
Launching the measure from the Budget Committee would not necessarily be a sign that GOP leaders are on the fast track to clearing the more than 1,100-page package they have officially named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” at Trump’s suggestion. In 2022, for example, it took Democrats more than 10 months to achieve final passage of their own behemoth party-line package, the Inflation Reduction Act, after the House Budget Committee approved an initial version in the summer of 2021.
Now Democrats are reveling in the GOP discord over their own megabill, which key to delivering on Trump’s biggest campaign-trail promises.
“There is a strong divide between Republicans and some other Republicans,” Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said during the Friday markup, prompting laughter throughout the room.
The House Budget Committee’s vote is a necessary — but largely performative — step that bundles the 11 different bills Republicans have approved over the last few weeks through their policy committees. They include the piece the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee advanced this week and the measure the Energy and Commerce Committee approved after an all-night markup that includes Medicaid policies forecast to strip health care coverage from more than 10 million people.
Fiscal conservatives voiced disappointment Friday that the package doesn’t include deeper spending cuts or slash tax benefits to low-income households.
“This is not the big, beautiful bill that I had hoped for,” Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) said during the markup. “The flaw with this bill is it doesn’t go far enough, fast enough, to get our fiscal house in order. But it does take some great strides.”
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) complained that “too many people out here did not want the wonderful bill that so many of us were expecting in January and February.”
Republican leaders’ decision to enforce work requirements on Medicaid recipients in 2029, rather than sooner, “indicates that there was kind of a lack of sincerity,” Grothman added. “Nevertheless, there’s some good things in here.”
Before his panel rejected the measure Friday, Arrington called the bill the key to “advancing the full ‘America first’ agenda, realizing President Trump’s vision and the House Republicans’ unwavering commitment to making America safe and prosperous again.”