Tense meetings as rebel Republicans delay tax bill under pressure from Trump

News24

6 hours ago

Republican leaders in the US Congress delayed a key vote for hours on President Donald Trump's signature tax and spending bill on Wednesday as they scrambled to win over a group of rebels threatening to torpedo the centrepiece of the president's domestic agenda.
Trump is seeking final approval in the House of Representatives for his Senate-passed 'One Big Beautiful Bill' - but faces opposition on all sides of his fractious party over provisions set to balloon the national debt while launching a historic assault on the social safety net.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told lawmakers to return to their offices, holding open a series of afternoon procedural votes required before final approval for more than three hours after it was first called - with no sign of the stalemate breaking.
Meanwhile, his lieutenants huddled in tense meetings with holdouts behind the scenes.
'We're going to get there tonight. We're working on it and very, very positive about our progress,' Johnson told reporters at the Capitol, according to Politico.
Originally approved by the House in May, the bill squeezed through the Senate on Tuesday by a solitary vote but had to return to the lower chamber on Wednesday for a rubber stamp of the Senate's revisions.
'This bill is President Trump's agenda, and we are making it law,' Johnson said in a determined statement, projecting confidence that Republicans were 'ready to finish the job'.
The package honours many of Trump's campaign promises, boosting military spending, funding a mass migrant deportation drive and committing $4.5 trillion to extend his first-term tax relief.
But it is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the country's fast-growing deficits, while forcing through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance programme since its 1960s launch.
Fiscal hawks in the House, meanwhile, are chafing over spending cuts that they say fall short of what they were promised by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Johnson has to negotiate incredibly tight margins, and can likely only lose three lawmakers among more than two dozen who have declared themselves open to rejecting the bill.
Lawmakers were hoping to return from recess early on Wednesday to begin voting straight away, although they have a cushion of two days before Trump's self-imposed 4 July deadline.
The 887-page text only passed in the Senate after a flurry of tweaks that pulled the House-passed text further to the right.
Republicans lost one conservative who was angry about adding to the country's $37 trillion debt burden and two moderates worried about almost $1 trillion in healthcare cuts.
Some estimates put the total number of recipients set to lose their health insurance at 17 million, while scores of rural hospitals are expected to close.
Meanwhile changes to federal nutrition assistance are set to strip millions of the poorest Americans of their access to the programme.
Johnson will be banking on Trump leaning on waverers, as he has in the past to turn around contentious House votes that were headed for failure.
The president has spent weeks cajoling Republicans torn between angering welfare recipients at home and incurring his wrath.
Trump pressured House Republicans to get the bill over the line in a private White House meeting with several holdouts on Wednesday.
'Our Country will make a fortune this year, more than any of our competitors, but only if the Big, Beautiful Bill is PASSED!' he said in a Truth Social post.
House Democrats have signalled that they plan to campaign on the bill to flip the chamber in the 2026 midterm elections, pointing to analyses showing that it represents a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest.
'Shame on Senate Republicans for passing this disgusting abomination,' House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters.