After a tense week of anger and foot-dragging, Republican fiscal hawks and House Freedom Caucus members voted to adopt the Senate’s budget framework on Thursday.
It marks the latest victory for Speaker Mike Johnson — and his top negotiating ally President Donald Trump — who persuaded a dozen or so conservative holdouts who were vehemently opposed to the Senate’s budget resolution earlier this week.
The House adopted the resolution 216 to 214.
Johnson had hoped to put the Senate’s budget resolution to bed during a Wednesday night vote. But after public pleas from Trump, huddles with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and an hour-long confab with leadership immediately ahead of the vote, the holdouts refused to budge.
Johnson punted to Thursday morning, allowing time for overnight meetings, a Johnson-Thune joint press statement and a Truth Social post from the president.
The last ditch maneuvering and fuzzy commitments from Thune were apparently enough to win over the House GOP opponents.
The challenge for Johnson all week was assuaging concerns from outraged holdouts who spent days blasting the Senate’s bill. House Freedom Caucus members and deficit hawks railed against the framework for Trump’s sweeping reconciliation bill, calling it “laughable,” “junk” and “unserious.”
The main sticking point for holdouts was that while the House approved a minimum of $1.5 trillion in cuts for its chamber, the Senate only committed to slashing a few billion. The Senate also approved a $5 trillion debt ceiling hike, compared to the House’s $4 trillion increase, which also infuriated House conservatives.
Thune tried to address those concerns Thursday morning, telling reporters that “Our ambition in the Senate is we are aligned with the House in terms of what their budget resolution outlined in terms of savings.”
“The speaker’s talked about $1.5 trillion dollars,” he continued. “We have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum, and we’re certainly going to do everything we can to be as aggressive as possible.”
Whether the Senate delivers on that target remains to be seen.
While the House and Senate aligning on the budget blueprint is a major development toward ultimately passing Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill, plenty of work and uncertainty lies ahead.
Now that the House has adopted the Senate’s budget resolution, both chambers will begin drafting the reconciliation bill text. Leaders will now navigate more brewing clashes over the specifics of spending cuts, potential slashes to Medicaid and a debt ceiling hike.
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Riley Rogerson and Daniella Diaz are reporters at NOTUS.