Trump agenda bill hanging by a thread after GOP hardliners tank key vote

President Trump’s legislative agenda is hanging by a thread as House Republican leaders scramble to make last-minute changes to their “big, beautiful bill” and cut deals to appease warring factions of the party.

The latest setback came Friday, when four spending hawks tanked a key vote in the House Budget Committee to advance the legislation as they dug in on demands for further cuts. The failed vote came despite Trump urging GOP lawmakers to “STOP GRANDSTANDING” and unify, and it forced the committee into an extended recess. 

The hardline conservatives on the Budget panel, however, are just the start of leadership’s problem. Top Republicans must also contend with demands from blue-state moderate Republicans to increase state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, all while trying to meet their self-imposed deadline of getting a package through the chamber by Memorial Day — a goal that is becoming more and more sky-high amid the snafus.

For now, however, leaders are sticking by the plan.

“What we would do is just call the vote again, and I suspect in very near term we will have a resolution and I’ll get all the votes we need to pass it out of committee,” House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters after the failed vote.

The next test for the panel will be late Sunday night, when the House Budget Committee is scheduled to reconvene at 10 p.m. to re-vote on advancing the megabill. After that, it heads to the House Rules Committee — which will make last-minute changes — before hitting the floor and facing the razor-thin GOP majority.

Leadership has its work cut out for it.

In the short-term, top lawmakers have to reach an agreement with the quartet of spending hawks — Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) — to get the bill through the Budget Committee, which will require negotiation on a number of fronts.

The group’s main gripe with the bill revolves around the delayed implementation of the beefed-up Medicaid work requirements, which would require childless adults aged 19-64 years old to prove they work, go to school or volunteer for 80 hours a month. Under the current proposal, however, the change doesn’t take effect until 2029 — four years too late for the hardliners, who want it applied immediately.

“Work-related requirements, four years, able-bodied men? No, it’s not four years,” Norman told reporters during the Budget hearing. “It’s not that complicated, and that’s what we said.”

Hardliners also want to speed-up the rollback of many green energy tax credits that Democrats enacted in 2022, when they had full control of Washington.

“All the growth on the electric grid, the United States electric grid, in the last two years, the super-majority of it is wind and solar displacing natural gas, and we’re delaying the implementation [of] cutting that stuff off until 2028?” Brecheen asked. “There are things that have to be worked out.”

Top House Republicans expressed optimism and touted progress on Friday, despite the failed vote. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said leaders were discussing the implementation timeline with the Trump administration.

“We’ve got a pretty clear idea of what the final pieces are and we’re working through those right now,” Scalise told reporters. “We’ve still got a few more steps to go, we all know what those steps are, we all know the remaining work we have to get done, and we’re in the process of doing that work right now.”

Separately, GOP leaders are also haggling with the centrist Republicans clamoring for a hike in the SALT cap. The current cap of $10,000 was created by the GOP’s 2017 tax law, adopted in Trump’s first term, but lawmakers from high-income states say the policy hurts middle-class households, not just the wealthy taxpayers it was designed to impact. 

In response, leadership increased the figure to $30,000, but that hasn’t appeased the GOP critics, particularly those in New York, New Jersey and California, who want it hiked even higher. Like the conservative holdouts, they say they’re ready to oppose the entire package unless they’re satisfied with the SALT provision.

“We'll get something done as soon as a number is offered that meets our criteria,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said Thursday. “That can happen in one minute, one day, one month. 

“Or maybe it never happens."  

Yet SALT is also a major sticking point for the conservatives. They say they’re fine with an increase in the cap, but they’re insisting that the resulting loss of federal revenue be backfilled by changes elsewhere in the budget. Norman is putting the onus on the supporters of the SALT hike to locate the savings themselves. 

“We made clear, [if you] raise the SALT cap — from 10 to 30 to whatever — pay for it. And you come up with the pay-for,” he said.

“This business of writing checks and having no income to pay for it is smoke and mirrors again,” he added. “And I’m through with that.” 

Heading into Friday’s failed Budget vote, the conservative holdouts had warned in no uncertain terms that they were ready to reject the package if a series of specific demands were not met. Norman had articulated those demands shortly beforehand, saying he would oppose the legislation unless leadership accelerated the implementation of three separate provisions: work requirements under Medicaid; an end to federal benefits for those in the country illegally, and a phase-out of green-energy tax subsidies established under President Biden. 

Norman also made clear that conservatives aren’t ready to swallow an increase in the $10,000 SALT cap unless the cost is offset by changes elsewhere in the budget.

Still, Arrington defended his decision to stage the vote even in the face of the opposition. He said the official tally provides “better clarity” about not only where the opposition stands, but why.

“Politicians are good at talking, but even we politicians, when we take a vote, it carries a tremendous amount of weight because you’re voting on behalf of your constituents,” Arrington told reporters after the failed vote. “It’s a catalyst to moving things forward, and it provides clarity — real clarity — with respect to where the rub is, where the pain points are, so that you can get to work to resolve it and move it forward.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said this week that while he’s been in talks with Trump about developments surrounding the debate, he hasn’t called on the president to help lobby the holdouts to get behind the bill. But Trump jumped into the fray on Friday morning, posting a social media message urging the rebels to drop their opposition for the sake of a party victory. 

“We don’t need “GRANDSTANDERS” in the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us.” 

The message was not overlooked by the bill’s critics, but it also didn’t compel them to change their tune — an indication that Trump’s powers of persuasion do have limits, even in a GOP conference that has supported virtually every piece of his second-term agenda.  

Norman, for one, pushed back on the accusation that the bill’s opponents are grandstanding. 

“I don’t need to grandstand,” Norman said. “This is: how do you disagree with the agenda he laid out? He’s a smart guy, and he’s got so many good things [in the bill]. 

“All we’re asking is [for] a little compromise somewhere. Let’s not give the farm,” he added. “It’s not right. It’s not right.”