Speaker Mike Johnson is working overtime to convince Republican holdouts to get behind the reconciliation bill so the House can meet its self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for passage.
But first, Johnson has to clear a more immediate hurdle: the Budget Committee.
Lawmakers on that panel are supposed to report the legislation out of their committee on Friday, which would then move the bill to Rules and set up a floor vote for as early as next week.
But two House Freedom Caucus members on the Budget Committee — Reps. Chip Roy and Ralph Norman — have said they won’t support the current bill in committee. And Norman has also said Rep. Andrew Clyde is a no as well.
There are 21 Republicans and 16 Democrats on the Budget Committee, and complicating the math, a person close to Rep. Brandon Gill told NOTUS that the Texas Republican won’t be in attendance for the Budget Committee markup because of the birth of his son. All Democrats on the committee are expected to vote against the measure.
One source told NOTUS there are talks of punting the Budget Committee’s markup to next week, but nothing is set in stone yet.
When asked if the markup would happen on Friday, the committee’s chair, Rep. Jodey Arrington, was less than definitive.
“We’ll see,” he said.
“There are concerns about having to get more information, which would potentially delay this to next week,” he said, adding that the Congressional Budget Office “is still working on some of these numbers.”
Of course, there are concerns beyond just getting Congressional Budget Office projections. If GOP leaders can’t flip any of these votes before the markup, the measure won’t advance out of committee.
“What we’ve got to do is have this stuff worked out,” Norman said. “They’re saying the framework has been met. The numbers have, but to backload all this stuff, it doesn’t work.”
Rep. Glenn Grothman also wouldn’t commit to voting yes or no, but he told reporters on his way to a meeting about the reconciliation bill on Thursday that the measure “doesn’t seem very sincere.”
Grothman told NOTUS he’d tell Arrington how he’d vote later today, citing a 2029 timeline for the implementation of Medicaid work requirements as his major concern.
In a post on X, Rep. Josh Brecheen — another member of the Budget Committee — also said he shares Roy’s concerns, though he stopped short of saying he’d vote no.
When asked in a text by a NOTUS reporter if he was a no in committee, Brecheen wouldn’t say. Instead, he texted back a winking-face emoji.
Johnson is desperately scrambling to get his conference in line. On Thursday, the Louisiana Republican met behind closed doors with Republicans — alongside White House legislative aides — to give rank-and-file members a chance to air out their grievances.
Unfortunately for Johnson, his greatest weapon for getting Republicans in line — President Donald Trump — is on a Middle East tour.
While lawmakers have shared that Trump has been talking to lawmakers and played a role in the negotiations, it’s been largely his legislative staff who have been pushing holdouts.
The two biggest sticking obstacles at the moment are blue-state Republicans who are trying to increase the state and local tax deduction and a group of conservatives who want more cuts in the bill.
More specifically, conservatives want cuts in the bill to kick in faster, suspecting that future cuts would just be delayed. (The two biggest items they want enacted sooner are those work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients and a repeal of Inflation Reduction Act subsidies. (Both start in 2029, after the next presidential election.)
But as daunting as the problems seem at the moment, Johnson projected confidence on Thursday, saying the bill is “almost in final form” and that he and others will continue meeting through the weekend.
“Everyone has known that the SALT issue is one of the big ones that we have to resolve,” Johnson told reporters. “It’s one of the key pieces of this equation to sort of meet the equilibrium point that everybody can be satisfied with. Not everybody’s going to be delighted with every provision in the bill this large, but everyone can be satisfied.”
There are other issues, too.
Curiously, one emerging problem is over firearm suppressors.
Some Republicans, like Reps. Clyde and Ben Cline, who are members of the Budget Committee, have been pushing leaders to include language in the bill that would remove firearm suppressors from regulations under the National Firearms Act.
The members notched a small win when the Ways and Means Committee included language in its portion of the bill removing the $200 NFA tax on suppressors. These Republicans want suppressors completely eliminated from the NFA, however.
“This is the venue through which it must be eliminated,” Clyde told NOTUS.
But GOP leaders worry the Senate parliamentarian may see the matter differently. They note that suppressors don’t fall under Ways and Means’ jurisdiction, and that including the language likely won’t work in reconciliation. (The parliamentarian will determine if certain policies actually have a substantial budgetary impact, and if they don’t, they’ll be subject to the Byrd rule, which imposes the normal 60-vote threshold on policies outside the scope of budget reconciliation.)
Still, Clyde told NOTUS there are ongoing discussions about including language in the bill, and he wouldn’t commit to voting for the legislation if it wasn’t included.
“I haven’t made any decisions like that yet,” he said. “It would certainly be better for me if it was.”
Cline told NOTUS he understands that leadership is “erring on the side of caution” that it won’t comply with the Byrd rule, but he wanted them to try.
“My hope is that the leadership will see a way to include it,” Cline said. “I’m appreciative of all the work that’s been done by the committees, and looking forward to moving the ‘big, beautiful bill’ forward.”
It’s not just Cline and Clyde who support this language being included. Even some members of leadership would like to see it added.
“It’s an important bill that I am passionate about, and we should put it in reconciliation if we are able to,” Rep. Kevin Hern told NOTUS in a statement.
Johnson also still has to solve the SALT issues. The bill currently raises the cap to $30,000 for people making under $400,000, a number several in the SALT caucus refuse to accept.
But if Johnson appeases that group by raising the SALT cap, he has committed to offsetting that spending with more savings.
“If the SALT cap goes up, then there’s more money you have to go find,” Rep. Byron Donalds said while leaving Johnson’s office. “I think $30,000 is more than generous.”
Rep. Nick LaLota said the SALT caucus hasn’t been given a “real number” yet by leadership.
“In order for us to breathe life into the bill that the Ways and Means Committee killed, the SALT caucus is going to need a real number soon,” LaLota told NOTUS. “What’s in the bill is dead on arrival.”
LaLota said he and others also wouldn’t accept additional cuts to Medicaid to pay for SALT.
“I want to win on SALT,” he said, “But I don’t want to chop off my left arm just to save my right.”
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Daniella Diaz and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.