President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday tried to convince conservative holdouts to back their sweeping tax and budget bill ahead of a self-imposed Memorial Day deadline, but a White House meeting reportedly failed to resolve the lingering opposition to the plan.
Trump reportedly summoned hard-right holdouts for an afternoon meeting, ramping up the pressure on members of the House Freedom Caucus who had warned earlier in the day that they still weren’t sold on the package containing much of the president’s domestic agenda.
GOP leaders reportedly have agreed to move up the introduction of new Medicaid work requirements from 2029 to December 2026. Conservatives still want steeper cuts to Medicaid and a faster unwinding of clean energy tax credits.
Johnson continued to push for a floor vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday night, even as the powerful House Rules Committee continued to debate the package in a marathon session that started at 1 a.m. Wednesday — and even though GOP leaders had yet to unveil a so-called manager’s amendment containing final revisions to the plan, a step made impossible because of ongoing negotiations. Johnson told CNN shortly after daybreak that he was still looking to hold a floor vote Wednesday night and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise delivered the same message to reporters later in the day: “We’re going to vote tonight,” he said.
Members of the Freedom Caucus quickly cast doubt on that timing. Rep. Andy Harris, the chairman of the ultraconservative group, told reporters on Wednesday morning that the White House had offered a proposal Tuesday night that might win their support, but he thought it would take days to finalize the bill. “There is a pathway forward that we can see,” Harris said before adding, “I'm not sure this can be done this week. I'm pretty confident can be done in 10 days.”
Any change approved by hardliners would likely stir up trouble with more centrist members. Earlier, Johnson had managed to largely placate blue-state moderates with a deal to raise the cap on the deductibility of state and local taxes. The agreement would raise the deduction limit to $40,000, phasing it out for households with incomes above $500,000, with the threshold for the phaseout growing over the 10 years covered by the bill. But given the push-and-pull dynamic in the fractious House Republican Conference, that deal upset conservatives by making a concession to Democratic-run states and raising the cost of the bill.
Rep. John Rose of Tennessee issued a surprising statement Wednesday afternoon saying he would join hardliners in opposing the bill with the SALT deal included. “Raising the SALT deduction is a bailout for Democrat Governors—paid for by red states with low taxes,” he wrote. “Tennesseans should not foot the bill for New York and California's mismanagement.”
Before Trump’s meeting, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement in support of the legislation that called on Congress to pass it “immediately” and contained what might be seen as a threat to Republican holdouts. “President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal,” said the statement.
Trump had visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday the drum up support for the legislation and urge both conservatives and moderates to back off demands that were impeding progress to a final vote.
Wednesday’s follow-up White House meeting had Harris and some other hardliners sounding somewhat more optimistic, indicating that progress had been made. The next few hours may determine whether it was enough to get the bill over the finish line.
The bottom line: House Republican leaders want to pass their bill tonight, or perhaps tomorrow, seemingly confident that they’ll win over the right-wing holdouts. It’s not yet clear that they’ll have the votes.