WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he is plowing forward this week with a vote on House Republicans’ multitrillion-dollar budget blueprint, a crucial test for President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
But a band of unruly conservatives is threatening to tank the vote.
Wary moderate Republicans appeared to be moving toward supporting the budget resolution after receiving some assurances from Johnson about Medicaid in a future package.
Still, at least three GOP rabble-rousers — Reps. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — vowed Tuesday that they’d vote against the budget plan over concerns it doesn’t cut spending enough.
“I am not voting for this,” Davidson said as he left a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday morning.
The way the budget is written is “actually increasing deficits,” warned Spartz. “With huge deficits … you young people, your life is destroyed.”
A fourth conservative, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said Tuesday afternoon that he was now “leaning no” after earlier coming out against the budget resolution.
“I still need some commitments on spending,” he told reporters after speaking with Trump by phone.
Those handful of votes could be enough to kill the measure. The GOP’s 218-215 House majority means Johnson can afford only a single GOP defection, though lawmaker absences could change the math.
Earlier Tuesday afternoon, the House advanced the budget resolution on a procedural vote of 217-211 along party lines, setting up a final vote as early as Tuesday evening. Four Democrats and one Republican did not vote, giving Johnson some extra breathing room.
Addressing reporters after that vote, Johnson said he was still working to win over skeptical Republicans, would be holding more meetings Tuesday afternoon and that Trump had been speaking to some of the holdouts as well.
“There’s a couple of folks that still have a couple questions and we’re going through it step by step,” Johnson said. “We’re making progress. … We’re trying to work through concerns and issues.”
“The president has talked to a number of members,” the speaker continued. “He’s made his intentions well known, and he wants them to vote for this and move it along.”
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said Trump may need to make calls to reticent lawmakers to get the budget plan across the finish line.
“I think President Trump may have to get involved — with a slim margin, as he should. I think he’ll get involved,” Norman said.
Norman disagreed with concerns among center-right members about the depth of spending cuts, saying he wants more, not less.
“This is minimal,” he said. “I would love to see a $5 trillion cut.”
If the House passes the measure and the Senate also adopts it, it’s merely one step in a complicated process. It would instruct committees to craft a massive party-line bill that Republicans can fast-track to floor votes, which can skip the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle.
The budget measure calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a goal of $2 trillion in spending cuts. It includes more than $100 billion in new spending on immigration enforcement and the military. It also requires the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in cuts to federal programs, and Republicans say some of that will come from reducing spending on Medicaid.
Democratic leaders are rallying in opposition to the GOP budget resolution, slamming it as a tax cut for the wealthy that will hurt working-class families by cutting Medicaid. They have coalesced around that political message intended to drive a wedge between Trump and swing voters, as well as his own voters who rely on federal benefits.
It’s a reprisal of the Democrats’ message from the opening years of Trump’s first administration, when Republicans also controlled both chambers of Congress. In the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats ran against the GOP’s tax cut law and failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Some center-right Republicans in competitive districts are nervous about potential Medicaid cuts that could have detrimental impacts on their constituents. The party agrees on raising the bar for accessing benefits through work requirements, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said Monday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press NOW,” but said she doesn’t support changes that would slash reimbursements to hospitals.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., who discussed his Medicaid concerns with Johnson, left Tuesday’s GOP conference meeting saying he’s “in a better place” on the budget and would join a group of GOP lawmakers at the White House later in the day.
Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., the chair of the House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, said there’s no fallback plan to extend the Trump tax cuts if the measure fails. He said the budget resolution the Senate adopted, which includes funding for border, military and energy policy but doesn’t address taxes, doesn’t stand a chance in the House.
“In order for us to start the process, we have to get a budget resolution,” Smith told NBC News. “The Senate version will never pass the House.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
