Trump's 24-hour House GOP blitz to save his ‘big, beautiful bill'

Telegraph

02-07-2025

Republican members of Congress trooped into the White House on Wednesday as Donald Trump tried to keep his domestic policy agenda on track and his 'big, beautiful, bill' moving through the House.
First came the moderates, including members of the 'Main Street' caucus, who worry that cuts to the nation's social safety net will make it harder for them to hold on to their seats in next year's midterm elections.
They were spotted by White House reporters arriving during the late morning.
Dusty Johnson, chairman of the Main Street Caucus, said the president had been persuasive.
'Donald Trump is the best closer in the business, and we're going to get it done,' Mr Johnson told Politico. 'In the meetings that I was in, the president, I think, closed out just about everybody.'
They were joined by JD Vance, the vice-president, and Dr Oz, the TV doctor who now serves as administrator for the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Mr Trump has set a July 4 deadline for the bill to reach his desk and be signed into law.
But he and the party whips face a delicate balancing act in the House of Representatives to get it over the line. With a majority of 120 to 112 they can afford to lose only three votes while trying to hold together a wing that thinks the bill goes too far and a wing that thinks it does not go far enough.
So although Mr Trump had nothing on his public schedule for the day, in reality he spent Wednesday working the phones between two two-hour meetings trying to nudge and cajole two very different groups of people.
A more truculent crowd arrived next, the fiscal hawks and the hardline conservatives of the House Freedom Caucus. Their beef is that a bill packed with tax cuts, and which ring-fences key spending pledges, will add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
On his way in, Rep Tim Burchett joked that he did not know if he was 'going in the White House or behind the woodshed'.
Two hours later, he filmed a video as he was leaving the building.
'The president answered all our questions,' he said. 'Was very informative.'
No sweeteners offered
A source familiar with the meetings said Mr Trump, who revels in the role of dealmaker, had not offered any sweeteners. Instead, he had talked up the importance of getting the bill passed in the face of Democratic opposition and of advancing pledges he made to the electorate last year.
'The president is doing everything he can to make sure this bill gets passed,' said a senior White House official.
His choice of the Independence Day national holiday deadline highlights the importance of legislation that encapsulates his entire domestic policy.
It would extend his 2017 tax cuts, fund his immigration crackdown and strip out green-energy subsidies, while slashing the federal safety net.
But its passage has been precarious. An earlier version passed the House by a single vote in May and Mr Vance had to use his casting vote to get an altered text through the deadlocked Senate on Tuesday.
The latest version would a dd $3.4 trillion to the national debt during the next decade, according to non-partisan analysts, much to the horror of fiscal hawks.
'The Senate bill moved way far away from the House bill,' Andy Harris, the Republican Congressman who chairs the Right-wing Freedom Caucus, told CNBC. 'We should take the time to get this right.'
The president used social media to keep up pressure.
'Nobody wants to talk about GROWTH, which will be the primary reason that the Big, Beautiful Bill will be one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed,' Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. 'Our Country will make a fortune this year, more than any of our competitors, but only if the Big, Beautiful Bill is PASSED!'
Conservatives circulated a memo setting out their opposition throughout the day. It spelt out concerns about the increase to the deficit, the way it 'watered down' cuts to green-energy subsidies and 'excessive pork' given to Alaska and Hawaii in order to smooth its passage through the Senate.
After the White House meetings, Republicans huddled in closed door meetings on Capitol Hill as they plotted their next moves.
Party leaders held open a series of procedural votes that left progress towards final approval stalled through the afternoon.
Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, said he was trying to convince the holdouts to back the bill.
'We are working through everybody's issues and making sure that we can secure this vote. I feel very positive about the progress,' he told reporters.