President Trump on Tuesday pressured House Republicans to unify around a wide-ranging bill to deliver his domestic agenda, as party leaders haggled with key holdouts over changes to the legislation aimed at winning their votes.
Joining them at their weekly closed-door party meeting, Mr. Trump pushed Republicans to drop their reservations about the legislation and embrace the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which leaders hope to bring to a vote by the end of the week. The president made it clear that he saw the package as a test of loyalty to him, saying he had been a “cheerleader” for the party, and warning that any holdouts “wouldn’t be a Republican much longer.”
The entreaties from Mr. Trump on Tuesday morning appeared to do little to resolve the rifts that have plagued the measure for weeks. Many Republicans emerged from the session saying they still were not sold, and wanted further changes before they could back the bill.
But by Tuesday evening, Speaker Mike Johnson’s behind-the-scenes negotiations with lawmakers from divergent factions across his conference appeared to have yielded some progress. He told reporters at the Capitol that they were “still finalizing things, but it’s not going to be a heavy lift.”
Republicans were planning a meeting of the powerful Rules Committee early Wednesday morning to lay the groundwork for a vote of the full House and send the measure to the floor. Any changes to the bill that Mr. Johnson has agreed to in order to win over holdouts must be presented to the panel, which controls which modifications can be made to legislation before it comes to a final vote.
“There are a lot of good things that have happened,” said Representative Chip Roy of Texas, who has become the unofficial ringleader of the House’s conservative wing holding out for major changes in the bill. “We’re in a better spot than we were a week ago. We’re in a better spot than we were even 48 hours ago. But there’s still a lot of things we’re ironing out.”
Several different groups of Republicans have expressed concern about the details of the sprawling bill, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts and eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay; raise spending on the military and immigration enforcement; and cut Medicaid, food stamps, education and subsidies for clean energy to pay for some of it.
The trick for Mr. Johnson will be to lock in concessions that mollify one faction without alienating another. Conservatives like Mr. Roy, for instance, have pressed for deep structural changes to Medicaid that swing-district Republicans have said they cannot support.
Several House Republicans who had been holdouts on their party’s sweeping bill said they believed they were close to the end of negotiations, even if they were not yet ready to commit to supporting the legislation.
Representative Nick LaLota of New York said that discussions with Mr. Johnson had yielded significant progress on the state and local tax deduction, which Republicans from high-tax states have been pressing to raise considerably.
“They presented numbers that were the reality of what we could possibly sell back home,” Mr. LaLota said of talks on Tuesday afternoon. “Numbers prior to that were just simply unsellable.”
Mr. Johnson and his deputies, along with White House officials, have been haggling for days with Republicans who have so far withheld their support for the legislation, demanding changes.
Behind closed doors on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump addressed each of the factions in turn, according to lawmakers who attended the meeting, lavishing praise on some Republicans and scorning others who have withheld their support for the legislation.
Those singled out included Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a libertarian who opposes the bill because it is projected to add trillions of dollars to the deficit, and Representative Mike Lawler of New York, a more moderate lawmaker from a politically competitive district who wants bigger state and local tax deductions.
Mr. Trump also scolded a bloc of conservative Republicans who have refused to back the bill because it does not include structural changes to Medicaid that would result in deeper cuts. Using profanity-laden language, Mr. Trump warned that Republicans shouldn’t mess “around with Medicaid.”
“He said, ‘Don’t cut Medicaid — just shut up about it,’” Mr. Massie said. “He said, ‘You can go after waste, fraud and abuse — that’s it; stop there.’ He was talking to the Freedom Caucus about that.”
To Republicans from high-tax states who are holding out for a substantially higher limit on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, Mr. Massie quoted the president as saying: “Quit talking about SALT. Don’t ask for any more.”
Mr. Trump has previously served as Mr. Johnson’s most powerful tool to get restive lawmakers in line on tough votes. It has been common for holdouts on matters of major import — the election of the speaker, the budget blueprint laying out the spending targets for the domestic policy bill — to cave after receiving a well-timed call from the president.
But his pleas on Tuesday did not seem to yield many converts.
Mr. Trump’s comments on Medicaid, in particular, rankled conservatives who have been lobbying for fundamental changes to the program. He told reporters as he entered the closed-door meeting that the legislation would not cut any Medicaid benefits and the reductions it did make were largely insignificant.
“We are not doing any cutting of anything meaningful,” he said. “The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud and abuse. With Medicaid — waste, fraud and abuse.”
The legislation, as currently written, is predicted to result in around 10 million Americans’ becoming uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Republican leaders omitted two of the most aggressive options they had considered to cut Medicaid, bowing to Mr. Trump’s stated opposition and to more moderate Republicans, mostly from politically competitive districts, who said they could not accept such reductions.
Representative Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri and a member of the Freedom Caucus, said it was “inappropriate” for Republicans to say that they “aren’t going to touch” Medicaid — a phrase that Mr. Trump has used — and then “leave all that fraud in the system.” He suggested that provider taxes, which states use to offset their portion of the cost of Medicaid, were a form of “fraud” that he would want to eliminate.
Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona said he still wanted more spending cuts.
“There is a lot in our federal government that gives us room to reduce,” he said. “And we want to get as balanced as we possibly can.”
The president also appeared to have flipped his position on SALT deductions, the amount of state and local taxes that can be written off on federal tax returns, which have emerged as a key sticking point. When asked about the Republican holdouts who want to see the limit on those deductions substantially increased, Mr. Trump declared that doing so would benefit only Democratic governors in high-tax states like Illinois and California.
Mr. Trump signed the original $10,000 cap into law in 2017, and indicated on the campaign trail that he would support eliminating or raising it further. The bill would triple the cap to $30,000, but several Republicans from high-tax states have threatened to withhold their support for the measure unless it rises even more.
White House officials regard passage of the domestic policy legislation as critical to delivering on Mr. Trump’s agenda and campaign promises, including tax cuts and stricter border enforcement. They view those policies as central to the president’s decisive victory in the election, as well as Republican control of Congress.
“I think we have unbelievable unity,” Mr. Trump said at the Capitol after leaving the meeting. “I think we’re going to get everything we want. And I think we’re going to have a great victory.”
Michael Gold and Erica L. Green contributed reporting.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
Maya C. Miller covers Congress as part of the Times Newsroom Fellowship, a program for journalists early in their careers. She is based in Washington.
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