President Donald Trump came to Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to help GOP leaders bulldoze his “big, beautiful bill” through a House vote.
He cajoled. He called out holdout lawmakers by name. He told them to stop negotiating and vote yes, already.
“He was emphatic: We need to quit screwing around. That was the clear message,” South Dakota Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson told reporters as he exited the meeting.
Why We Wrote This
The president’s second-term legacy rests on whether he can persuade enough GOP lawmakers to support his priorities. And it’s clear he has more to do to close the deal.
House Republican leaders have signaled they might force a vote on the megabill, which contains nearly all of the president’s top legislative priorities, as soon as Wednesday. They can afford no more than three defections.
But as GOP lawmakers streamed out of the meeting, it was clear many are not ready to vote for the bill as it stands – a sign that some of them may be willing to put their top legislative priorities ahead of their loyalty to the president, even as the pressure ramps up on them to support his agenda.
The Capitol Hill meeting was the most public, assertive move the president has made so far in support of the legislation, which extends the individual tax cuts that were the signature legislative achievement of his first term in office, and includes billions in spending for a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants, his top second-term priority. His second-term legacy rests on whether he can strong-arm enough GOP lawmakers to support his priorities. And it’s clear he has more to do to close the deal.
He told lawmakers that he opposed cutting Medicaid besides cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a warning shot at the conservatives who are demanding more aggressive changes to the program to reduce costs. He also told lawmakers to stop negotiating on the cap on state and local tax deductions. SALT has been a major sticking point for blue-state Republicans, who want to greatly increase the cap on those deductions, which has forced many of their constituents to pay much higher taxes.
Mr. Trump stayed vague on the details, however. He didn’t say what constitutes cracking down on “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Medicaid, leading some lawmakers to believe that included adding work requirements – a top priority for conservative hard-liners – and others to assume he meant the opposite. He also wasn’t specific about what specific SALT cap he supported.
The president projected confidence the bill would get through soon.
“We have unbelievable unity,” Mr. Trump said as he exited the meeting. “I think we’re going to get everything we want.”
A number of Republican lawmakers – including some holdouts – said that the president’s speech had helped move the bill forward
But even after hearing him out, both the SALT holdouts and the fiscal hawk hard-liners weren’t ready to get on board.
New York Rep. Mike Lawler, whom lawmakers said the president called out by name during the closed-door meeting, said that the bill’s current increase in the SALT cap was simply “insufficient,” and that he’d keep negotiating on the bill.
“We will continue the dialogue with leadership. But as it stands right now, I do not support the bill – period,” he said.
House Republican leaders continued to negotiate with the SALT holdouts as late as Monday night, and had made an offer higher than what’s currently in the bill, but they still weren’t happy.
“We need a little more SALT on the table to get to yes,” said New York Rep. Nick LaLota, another holdout.
Fiscal hawks weren’t ready to get on board either.
Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and normally a close Trump ally, who has criticized this bill, said that the president’s speech hadn’t persuaded him – and that he needed to see the bill itself.
“I need to see text,” he said.
Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, a fiscally conservative hard-liner who often breaks with his party, said that the president had called him out by name in the meeting. But he said his mind hadn’t changed. “I’m a no,” he told reporters.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is new to leadership and only won the speakership because Mr. Trump called holdout lawmakers and demanded they vote for him. He’s heavily dependent on the president’s muscle with his most stubborn members on key votes.
Congressional negotiations are often messy, ugly, and appear on the brink of failure multiple times before lawmakers figure out a package they can pass. That may be especially true in this Congress, because House Republicans’ razor-thin majority means any handful of lawmakers can blow up a deal.
The president had until this point not paid too much attention to Congress, focusing his first months on executive orders. This may just be the opening salvo as he ramps up pressure on recalcitrant lawmakers. But that pressure alone seems like it won’t be enough to squeeze his bill through the House. They still want changes. And the question remains as to whether they can draft a bill that does enough to please the SALT holdouts and offset spending for the hard-liners without losing moderates.
“We’re still a long ways away, but we can get there,” said Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a critic of the current bill. “Maybe not by tomorrow, but we can get there.”
And then comes the Senate – which might be an even greater hurdle.
