President Trump on Tuesday urged congressional Republicans not to leave Washington at the end of the week for a scheduled recess until they pass a sprawling bill to enact his domestic agenda, ratcheting up pressure on hard-liners in the House to swallow their objections and adopt the legislation the Senate is crafting.
Congressional Republicans are racing to meet a self-imposed deadline of July 4 to pass the measure, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts, create new tax breaks and slash some programs, including Medicaid and nutrition assistance, to help offset the cost. The Senate is toiling to complete its own version of the legislation the House passed last month.
“To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY.”
Mr. Trump’s demand reflected a strategy emerging among Senate Republicans to ignore the substantial concerns of their House colleagues about key pieces of the bill and plow ahead with it anyway, effectively forcing Republicans in that chamber to support it or risk angering Mr. Trump and derailing his bill.
While the House has already approved the legislation, any changes made by the Senate will send it back to the House, where it must win final passage to clear Congress and go to the White House for Mr. Trump’s signature.
Some conservatives in the House only grudgingly voted for the legislation the first time, arguing that it did not go far enough in cutting spending, including on Medicaid. They agreed to support the package only after securing what they characterized as commitments from their Senate colleagues to enact deeper cuts and fix the measure.
Now, those House Republicans regard the bill taking shape in the Senate, which party leaders hope to push through within days, as even worse.
The Senate measure would cut more deeply into Medicaid and crack down harder than the House bill on strategies that many states have developed to tax medical providers and pay them higher prices for Medicaid services.
But it also would slow the House’s timetable for phasing out federal tax credits for clean energy projects, preserving breaks for companies that build nuclear reactors, geothermal plants, hydropower dams or battery storage through 2033. And it would take longer to phase out a lucrative tax credit for businesses that build wind and solar farms.
Conservatives in the House on Tuesday vented fresh frustration with the Senate, suggesting that they would not be rolled by members of their own party.
“Rumor is Senate plans to jam the House with its weaker, unacceptable OBBB,” Representative Chip Roy of Texas wrote on social media, using an abbreviation for what Republicans have named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “This is not a surprise but it would be a mistake. The bill in its current Senate form would increase deficits, continue most Green New Scam subsidies, & otherwise fail even a basic smell test… I would not vote for it as it is.”
Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, who voted “present” on the House-passed bill, also said he would not vote for the version the Senate was putting together.
“The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities,” said Mr. Harris, the chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. “It doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit — taking us even further from a balanced budget.”
Republicans can afford to lose no more than three votes in either chamber on the legislation, if all members are present and voting and Democrats oppose it en masse, as expected.
Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday urged caution, telling reporters he had advised House Republicans that it would be “premature to judge a product that hasn’t been delivered.”
“We remain on the same page about where the red lines are on all of this,” Mr. Johnson said. “I’m very optimistic that we will have a product that both chambers can agree to, but we have to allow the Senate space to do their work, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
Senators have yet to finalize their bill.
They are putting their legislation through a review by the Senate parliamentarian, the arbiter of the chamber’s rules, to determine whether its provisions comply with a rigorous set of budgetary restrictions meant to ensure that it will not add to the deficit. The entire package must meet those requirements in order to to be shielded from a filibuster, depriving Democrats of the ability to block it.
In the meantime, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, is working to tamp down objections to the bill from his own members.
Some Republicans, like Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Josh Hawley of Missouri, object to the bill’s Medicaid cuts. Others, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, believe it would add too much to the nation’s deficit and needs to cut even more deeply.
“This is a process whereby everybody doesn’t get everything they want,” Mr. Thune said on Tuesday. “But I think we produced a bill, working with the House, working with the White House, that will get the requisite number of Republican senators to vote for it, so that we can pass it, get it back to the House. Hopefully they can take it up and pass it and put it on the president’s desk.”
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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