Republican holdouts bristle at Trump pressure over megabill
It was a call to action after House Speaker Mike Johnson directed his caucus to converge back on Washington from home districts around the country, braving flight delays due to storms in the capital to rush back in time for a vote before Independence Day.
But the vote is in doubt, and signs have emerged of cracks in a coalition otherwise firmly under Trump's control.
'The president of the United States didn't give us an assignment,' Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Republican from Wisconsin, told reporters, using an expletive to suggest Trump was treating lawmakers like his minions. 'I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites. Is that clear?'
Frustration within the Republican Party is coming from two disparate camps of a broad-tent coalition that have their own sets of grievances: fiscal hawks who believe the bill adds too much to the national debt, and GOP lawmakers representing districts that heavily rely on Medicaid.
One GOP lawmaker who attended the White House meeting on Wednesday, Rep. David Valadao of California, represents a Central Valley district with one of the highest percentages of Medicaid enrollment in the nation.
The president's megabill, which he calls the 'big beautiful bill,' levies historic cuts to the healthcare program that could result in up to 12 million Americans losing health coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, gutting $1 trillion in funding and introducing a work requirement for enrollees of 80 hours per month until they turn 65 years old.
The proposed legislation also restricts state taxes on healthcare providers, known as the 'provider tax,' an essential tool for many states in their efforts to supplement Medicaid funding. Several Republican lawmakers fear that provision could have devastating effects on rural hospitals.
A handful of Republican lawmakers from North Carolina have bristled at the president's pressure campaign, with Rep. Chuck Edwards telling Punchbowl News that the White House meeting 'didn't sway my opinion.' North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, was one of three senators who voted against the bill on Tuesday, warning it would devastate his state. It still passed with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.
The vote is shaping up to be narrow in the House, as well, where Johnson can only afford to lose three votes in order to pass the omnibus legislation.
Earlier Wednesday, after taking meetings at the White House, members of the House Freedom Caucus, a bloc founded to promote fiscal responsibility, also met with Johnson. The speaker emerged with a message of tempered optimism.
'I feel very positive about the progress, we've had lots of great conversations,' Johnson told reporters Wednesday, 'but we can't make everyone 100% happy. It's impossible.'
'This is a deliberative body. It's a legislative process by definition — all of us have to give up on personal preferences,' he continued. 'I'm never going to ask anyone to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good. And that's what I think people are recognizing and coming to grips with.'
Trump says the legislation encompasses his entire domestic agenda, extending tax cuts passed during his first term in 2017 and beefing up funding for border security, mass deportations, and the Defense Department.
Cuts to Medicaid, as well as to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP, are intended to offset a fraction of the costs. But the CBO still estimates the legislation will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, and hundreds of billions to the deficit, with other nonprofit budget trackers forecasting even higher figures.
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