House Speaker Mike Johnson performed an unenviable tightrope walk on Tuesday night balancing Donald Trump’s agenda and unruly GOP dissident’s demands.
The House was set to vote on a resolution to advance a budget that will guide how Congress spends trillions of dollars to advance the president’s deportation plans, enact tax cuts on tips, overtime and more. The bill will facilitate around $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to Republicans.
The process has taken up much of Johnson’s time in recent months, and as the top Republican in Congress, he has all but promised the 78-year-old president he knows exactly how to mobilize the Capitol’s 272 Republican personalities.
But on Tuesday Republican Reps. Tim Burchett, Victoria Spartz, Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson signaled they were against the GOP-led effort.
Massie noted the package over 10 years ‘will add $20 trillion to U.S. debt,’ while Spartz also noted Tuesday on X the plan will ‘make deficit even worse.’
Burchett shared he was skeptical of the budget framework as the tax cuts within it are not ‘permanent.’ The standoff between the four undecided Republicans and Johnson grew so contentious that Trump got involved and began phoning holdouts.
Burchett reportedly didn’t give the president a yes or no answer, instead he promised Trump he’d pray on it. Massie did not get on the phone with Trump, he told reporters before walking into the vote.
And as Johnson and his top allies in leadership tried to convince the holdouts, they were unsuccessful, and the vote on the budget was scrubbed. Johnson and leadership couldn’t sway the few Republicans stonewalling them.
But then another announcement went out 10 minutes later, indicating the vote would indeed happen and that some had a dramatic change of heart. The vote, which seemed for a while to be killed, was all the sudden back on.
Donald Trump tapped Speaker Mike Johnson to shepherd his agenda through Congress. As Johnson ran into unruly GOP lawmakers, he had them get on the phone with the president
Reps. Massie and Burchett signaled unease with the proposed budget before the vote on it
The vote eventually passed 217 – 215 after Davidson, Spartz and Burchett came out for the resolution.
Massie held strong and voted against the entire GOP conference.
Davidson said he swapped his ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ after receiving assurances on discretionary spending levels.
‘The president’s talked to a number of members,’ Johnson said. ‘He’s made his intentions well known and he wants them to vote for this and move it along so we can start this process.’
After Johnson secured the tenuous vote many Republicans congratulated him, slapping him on the back and shaking his hand.
‘Today, House Republicans moved Congress closer to delivering on President Trump’s full America First agenda — not just parts of it,’ Johnson said in a statement after the measure passed.
‘While there is still much more to do, we are determined to send a bill to President Trump’s desk that secures our border, keeps taxes low for families and job creators, restores American energy dominance, strengthens America’s standing on the world stage, and makes government work more effectively for all Americans.’
Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., initially was against the bill before she eventually voted for it and helped Johnson and Trump push forward their agenda
Johnson has been adamant that he can achieve many of Trump’s legislative goals in one bill
Specifically, the budget framework allows the House Ways and Means Committee to run up a $4.5 trillion deficit because of sweeping tax cuts that will empty the tax committee’s coffers.
In exchange, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, will have to spend $1.5 trillion less, and the House Appropriations Committee, which doles out funding, will have to operate with $1.5 trillion less too.
Other sectors of government will make cuts too to be able to afford the tax cuts and additional border security funding in the measure.
Reconciliation – the process in which the House and Senate link up and reconcile their budgets into one plan – will allow many of Trump’s wishlist policies to be wrapped into one legislative package to be voted on this year.
This means the Republican-led House and Senate can jam it through all at once as Democrats, mathematically outnumbered, have few options to stymie the effort.
In fact, dozens of Democrats protested the bill outside the Capitol on Tuesday, with one sending a curse-laden message to Elon Musk.
All Democrats have vowed to vote against the bill, saying it could cut things like Medicare and spending for veteran
Democrats slammed the proposal for making cuts to social food programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food credits to tens of millions of Americans monthly.
Meanwhile, Republicans have introduced legislation to add additional requirements for SNAP enrollees, like provisions requiring them to work a number of hours weekly.
