As I write this newsletter, House Republicans are still haggling over President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, which their counterparts in the Senate nudged over the finish line by the narrowest of margins on Tuesday.
But we do know this: The bill’s Republican critics hate the July 4 deadline set by the president to get it all done.
Earlier today, Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee called the deadline “arbitrary,” which it is, and added that it had led lawmakers “to what we’re doing right now, and that’s panicking.”
Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a budget hawk who has expressed deep anger that the Senate’s version of the bill increases the deficit by more than what the version the House passed this spring would have, told reporters this morning that at least some of his colleagues in the narrowly divided House wanted more time to work over the bill.
“The Senate doesn’t get to be the final say on everything,” Roy said. “We’ve got to work this out. And the legislative process used to work that way. It used to ping-pong three, four, five, six times, go to conference.”
And Representative Andy Harris of Maryland took to CNBC to advocate doing away with the deadline to give Republicans from both chambers more time to find a compromise.
To these lawmakers, I say: Welcome to my world. Nobody knows better than your friendly politics newsletter writer just how much a deadline can make a person squirm, or how deeply one yearns for just a little bit more time as the clock ticks down.
Trump is hoping, though, that the only thing more painful for these lawmakers than meeting his deadline is missing it.
The president is using the deadline as another weapon with which to strong-arm his party, much as he has wielded threats to support primary challengers against anyone who votes against the bill. By keeping the pressure on, he is trying not only to stop Republicans from voting no, but also endeavoring to limit their ability to even consider how the bill might be improved.
“We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk,” Trump posted yesterday on his social media website. “We are on schedule — Let’s keep it going, and be done before you and your family go on a July 4thvacation.”
Trump himself, of course, has blown countless self-imposed deadlines. He did not end the Russian invasion of Ukraine on his first day in office, as he once promised to do. He often sets two-week deadlines for himself that fade away (he bombed Iran, though, just two days after he’d set a two-week deadline to decide whether to do so).
He nevertheless expects lawmakers to take him seriously on this deadline. For Trump, this is in part a practical consideration. Any changes House lawmakers make to the bill would have to be approved thereafter by the Senate — a back-and-forth that could sap the hulking measure of its momentum and stall out the process, perhaps indefinitely.
Trump has learned the hard way that delays can hurt. In 2017, House Republican leaders were forced to pull their repeal of the Affordable Care Act from the floor after their three-month blitz to quash the law fizzled. Four months later, the Senate rejected a scaled-down version of the plan. Barack Obama’s signature health care law remains on the books.
The deadline is also a way for a president who has never gotten too bogged down in the details to try to keep members of his party in line.
It remains to be seen, though, whether his determination to pass the bill by Independence Day will be enough to make that happen. Trump himself acknowledged this week that the deadline would be hard to meet. And Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina told reporters at the Capitol today that he and other holdouts still hadn’t made up their minds. My colleague Robert Jimison reported that, when asked if he believed all of their concerns could get resolved on Wednesday, Norman responded, “Probably not.”
House conservatives have caved before, though, and Speaker Mike Johnson expressed optimism early Wednesday evening. If the bill succeeds, Trump’s oft-repeated deadline could be a key reason.
by the numbers
Voters still don’t like the big bill
A majority of Americans do not see the beauty in President Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation — and those numbers haven’t changed much as the bill works its way through Congress. I asked my colleague Ruth Igielnik, the Times polling editor, to explain what we know.
In several high-quality polls, more than half of Americans surveyed say they oppose the budget bill that just passed the Senate.
The most recent, from Quinnipiac University, found 55 percent of voters saying they oppose the legislation; just 29 percent supported it.
Republicans have a more favorable view of the legislation than Democrats do, but it is not a slam dunk with Republicans. Roughly two-thirds of Republicans in the Quinnipiac poll supported the bill, while 17 percent opposed it and 16 percent were uncertain.
Many voters are deeply concerned about how the legislation might affect their daily lives. Roughly half of all voters — including 20 percent of Republicans — say they expect the bill to hurt them and their families, according to a Fox News poll.
A majority of Americans say they expect the bill to help those with the highest incomes, according to a Pew Research Center survey. More than half also expect the bill to hurt lower- and middle-income Americans.
Then again, only about 60 percent of voters in the Fox poll said they understood what was in the bill, and just 17 percent said they understood its contents very well. Lower-income voters were even less likely to say they understood what was in the bill.
Voters are largely split along partisan lines over how the bill changes Medicaid. A majority of Republicans support its Medicaid work requirements, while a majority of Democrats oppose them, Quinnipiac found.
Reactions to the bill’s specific tax provisions are mixed. More people favor than oppose ending the 2017 tax cuts that were set to expire at the end of the year, as well as increasing taxes on colleges and universities with large endowments. Fewer people favor ending tax credits for electric vehicles and alternative-energy companies, according to Pew.
THE MOMENT
A chill in the Senate
Tierney Cross, a New York Times photographer, arrived at the Capitol around 7 p.m. on Monday, ready to cover her first all-night voting session as the Senate took up the president’s domestic policy bill. She was looking, she told me, for visual cues that would show how the marathon arm-twisting session was more than a regular day on Capitol Hill.
At 2:15 a.m., she found one.
Tierney had planted herself in a hallway near the offices of Senate Republican leaders, a place she knew would probably turn up Republicans who hadn’t yet decided whether to support the bill. Suddenly, Senator Susan Collins of Maine and a haggard-looking Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, her summer-weight suit draped with a blanket to ward off the Senate floor’s cold, stepped into the frame.
We know now that Tierney had captured two moderates whose choices would diverge. Murkowski backed the bill after it was loaded with sweeteners for her state; Collins voted against it, citing its cuts to Medicaid.
At the time, though, none of that was clear. In the dark and the cold, Tierney said, “Nobody really knew what was going on.”
ASK THE TIMES
Do you have questions about the New York City mayor’s race or our coverage of New York politics? Ask them here; we may feature them in a newsletter.
Happy Fourth of July! On Politics will be back on Monday.
Ruth Igielnik contributed to this newsletter.
Jess Bidgood is a managing correspondent for The Times and writes the On Politics newsletter, a guide to how President Trump is changing Washington, the country and its politics.
The post The Power and the Pain of a Deadline appeared first on New York Times.
