Speaker Mike Johnson labored on Wednesday to overcome resistance in his own ranks to bringing up President Trump’s marquee domestic policy for a final vote in the House, as Republicans dismayed by Senate changes threatened to derail it.
The House was marching toward a test vote that would allow the bill to come to the floor for debate, but several conservative Republicans raised objections, suggesting that Mr. Johnson might lack the votes to move forward.
Facing tight margins in the House, he can only afford a small handful of defections on the measure, which would slash taxes by a total of $4.5 trillion, increase funding for defense and border security, and cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid with more reductions to food assistance for the poor.
As of midday, at least two Republicans had said they planned to vote against the procedural measure.
While Mr. Trump huddled with holdouts at the White House and Democrats and Republicans lawmakers battled over the merits of the bill on the House floor, Mr. Johnson and his leadership team projected confidence. Top Republicans insisted they could push the legislation across the finish line ahead of Mr. Trump’s July 4 deadline, especially given their previous success corralling disparate factions of Republicans to help secure initial passage of the bill in May.
“We’re going to pass this,” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, said. “It’s just a matter of when.”
But unlike in prior down-to-the-wire efforts, when a flurry of negotiations and changes helped Mr. Johnson sway holdouts, the House has little room for maneuvering: Any changes to the bill would send it back to the Senate for negotiations that could drag for weeks, potentially killing the enterprise altogether.
The Senate’s version of the legislation has exacerbated deep internal divides among Republicans that have plagued their efforts to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda since the beginning. Fiscal conservatives are demanding even deeper cuts to rein in the deficits, while politically vulnerable lawmakers whose seats are at risk during next year’s midterm elections have resisted the biggest cuts to popular government programs.
Members of the anti-spending faction, including in the vocal House Freedom Caucus, are furious at measures added by the Senate that increased the cost of the legislation and its affect on the national debt.
“The Senate doesn’t get to be the final say on everything. We’ve got to work this out,” Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the Freedom Caucus, said. On Wednesday morning, he said there were enough Republicans “right now” who wanted to reopen the bill and were willing to blow through the July 4 recess to do so, suggesting the votes would not be there to move it forward.
And more moderate Republicans, many of them anticipating difficult re-election campaigns in swing districts, object to Medicaid cuts approved by the Senate that went deeper than those approved by the House in May.
Members of both groups were scheduled to attend separate meetings at the White House on Wednesday as Mr. Trump and Republican leaders tried to persuade them to advance the bill.
As he headed for one such session, Representative Tim Burchett, an ultraconservative Republican from Tennessee, told reporters that he was pushing for a bill that addressed the deficit and adhered to the House’s framework on cuts to taxes and social safety net programs like Medicaid and nutrition assistance.
It was not clear whether such resistance would hold. Conservatives have repeatedly refused to back major legislation, only to back down under pressure from Mr. Trump.
With timing of any House action uncertain, Democrats raised a number of procedural roadblocks to register their opposition to the measure and slow its progress.
“When we say the Republican Party has turned into a cult, this is what we mean,” said Representative Seth Magaziner, Democrat of Rhode Island. “Our Republican colleagues are pushing a bill that would throw their constituents under the bus, a bill that flies in the face of everything they claim to stand for, all because Donald Trump wants a bill signing photo-op by the Fourth of July.”
Emboldened by the G.O.P. rift, Democrats have made a point of projecting a united front while they railed against the bill and ramp up pressure on vulnerable Republicans.
At a news conference on the House steps attended by a sizable portion of the Democratic caucus, Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat, called out Representative David Valadao of California, one of the most endangered Republicans. She questioned how he could back a bill that would slash Medicaid, a program that he has repeatedly voiced concern about.
Mr. Valadao has said he cannot support the level of Medicaid cuts included in the Senate measure.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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