WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders are racing to drag a sweeping bill for President Donald Trump’s agenda across the finish line even as some holdouts are dug in and key issues remain unresolved.
The House Rules Committee begun debating the multitrillion-dollar domestic policy package shortly after 1 a.m. ET Wednesday, the final step before it heads to the full chamber. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he hopes the House will vote on the legislation and send it to the Senate as soon as Wednesday evening.
GOP leaders are furiously working to resolve lingering disputes between warring factions that have held up the package. Most notably, anti-spending hawks have pushed for steeper cuts, while a bloc of blue-state lawmakers have demanded a bigger state and local tax deduction.
Dubbed by Trump as “one big beautiful bill,” the 1,100-page-plus legislation would extend the president’s 2017 tax cuts, boost spending for immigration enforcement and military, and make cuts to areas like Medicaid and clean energy tax credits. It would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.
The unusual 1 a.m. Rules Committee hearing sparked criticism from Democrats that the GOP was trying to push the bill through in “the dead of night.”
“I’ve been calling it the vampire committee because it seems like they’re going to just suck all the health care away from Americans in the middle of the night,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., a member of the panel.
Republicans defended the early-morning hearing, with Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., the chair of the Rules Committee, arguing it has a long history of approving bills “long after most of America has gone to bed.” But starting after midnight also gives the GOP a chance to push the bill through the House on the same day — ahead of Johnson’s self-imposed Memorial Day deadline.
“I believe we’re gonna land the plane,” a weary Johnson told reporters Tuesday evening in between meetings with GOP holdouts.
Republicans can lose only three GOP votes on the House floor given their narrow majority before putting the package at risk of collapse. And they’ve already lost Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., the only member who has opposed it every step of the way, citing the trillions of dollars it would add to the national debt.
Ahead of the Rules Committee hearing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an analysis finding that the legislation would negatively affect the lowest income earners and benefit the wealthiest Americans. Specifically, CBO said the bill would decrease household resources among the lowest decile of income earners by 4%, while increasing household resources among the highest decile of income earners by 2% by 2023.
Still, GOP leaders are charging forward. Trump made a trek to the Capitol on Tuesday to urge House Republicans to unite behind the bill.
“I think we’re going to get it done,” Trump said. “I’m not losing patience. We’re ahead of schedule.”
Late Tuesday night, Johnson appeared to be closing in on a deal with a bloc of blue-state Republicans to resolve a thorny tax issue.
Under the tentative deal, according to four GOP sources, the maximum that individuals could deduct in state and local taxes (SALT) would be hiked to $40,000 a year — up from the original $30,000 proposal that the blue-state Republicans rejected. That’s a dramatic increase from the $10,000 cap that was established in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Those making under a $500,000 a year would be eligible for the tax deduction, the sources said. And both the cap and the income level would increase by 1 percent annually for 10 years, at which point those figures would then become the new baseline, meaning the cap and income level would not snap back to previous levels after the 10-year period.
During his meeting at the Capitol, Trump urged the pro-SALT Republicans to relent on their demands. But negotiations continued throughout the day in the speaker’s office, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., went to the White House Tuesday to help secure the higher SALT offer, one of the GOP sources said.
Conservative hard-liners, however, have been skeptical of a higher SALT cap as they’ve pushed to speed up the implementation of work requirements for Medicaid and the phasing out of certain clean energy tax credits, in addition to other spending cuts.
“I think actually we’re further away from a deal because that SALT cap increase, I think, upset a lot of conservatives,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., said during an appearance on Newsmax on Wednesday morning.
“This bill actually got worse overnight,” he said. “There’s no way it passes today. … We may need a couple weeks to iron everything out.”
Even if House Republicans manage to pass the party-line package, it would still have a long way to go. Republicans in the Senate have vowed to make changes to the legislation, which the House would then need to approve before it goes to Trump’s desk.
Democrats have blasted the Trump legislation as the “GOP tax scam” and the “Big Ugly Bill,” warning it will slash Medicaid and critical food programs while handing tax breaks to the wealthy.
“As a result of this bill, nearly 14 million Americans will lose their healthcare, and millions more will pay higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles. Hospitals will close, nursing homes will shut down and people will die,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to the speaker and Foxx.
“This bill makes the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history. It takes food out of the mouths of children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities.”
The CBO has projected that 8.6 million would lose their coverage as a result of the legislation. Top Democrats are inflating the figure by counting additional coverage losses if the enhanced Obamacare tax credits expire, but those were set to expire after 2025 under the Inflation Reduction Act.
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