By Aidan Quigley and David Lerman
CQ-Roll Call
(TNS)
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders couldn’t nail down the votes needed to advance the GOP’s giant budget reconciliation bill out of the Budget Committee on Friday in the face of opposition from a handful of hard-line Freedom Caucus members.
The panel rejected the measure by a 16-21 vote, and the markup went into recess subject to the call of the chair. Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., all have concerns about the draft bill and stood in the way of 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 that was so he could bring up a motion to reconsider the package, which wouldn’t come until Monday at the earliest.
Most panel members already had plans to head home to their districts.
“I do not anticipate us coming back today,” House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas, told panel members after the vote Friday. “The weekend is yours’ and your families’.”
‘Something needs to change’
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of the bill, and wants green energy tax credits Democrats enacted in their 2022 budget reconciliation package to be repealed faster.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 Monday morning and report the bill out. That would keep the package still basically on schedule, with Rules able to meet as soon as later in the day if 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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©2025 CQ-Roll Call Inc. Visit at rollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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Tags: Congress, Legislation, SALT Cap, Taxes, Trump tax cuts, Trump tax plan
