President Trump on Tuesday huddled with House Republicans on Capitol Hill to urge them to unify around a wide-ranging bill to deliver his domestic agenda, ratcheting up the pressure for the party to overcome divisions that could sink the package.
Joining Republicans at their weekly closed-door meeting, Mr. Trump praised Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been toiling to cobble together the votes to pass what the party has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which they hope to bring to a vote by the end of the week.
“I’m his biggest fan — I love this guy,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Johnson before the meeting. The speaker can afford to lose no more than three votes on the bill if all Democrats oppose it, as expected, and every lawmaker is present and voting.
The president made it clear that he saw passage of the measure 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.”
But he minimized the very real rifts within his party that could derail the measure, saying there were “one or two grandstanders” holding it up.
That is not the case. Several Republican factions 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.
Mr. Trump insisted that the bill would not cut any benefits, telling reporters on Capitol Hill: “We are not doing any cutting of anything meaningful. The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud and abuse. With Medicaid: waste, fraud and abuse.” That statement was not likely to sit well with the fiscal conservatives who are withholding their support for the legislation because they argue it does not make meaningful enough changes to Medicaid to substantially bring down its costs and rein in deficits.
The legislation, as currently written, is predicted to result in at least 8.6 million Americans becoming uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But 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.
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 Republican holdouts who want to see the limit on those deductions substantially increased, Trump declared that doing so would only benefit 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.
Maya C. Miller, Robert Jimison and Erica L. Green contributed reporting.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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