There are still a number of hang-ups and holdouts. Conservatives aren’t yet on board. Blue-state Republicans don’t have an agreement on the state and local tax deduction. And the bill isn’t even entirely written yet.
But Speaker Mike Johnson is forging ahead this week with the GOP’s sweeping reconciliation bill, hoping he can somehow meet his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline to pass the legislation.
Over the weekend, after four Republicans on the House Budget Committee voted with Democrats against the bill on Friday, Republicans scrambled to get the holdouts onboard. They eventually came along — sort of. All four voted “present” in committee late Sunday night, allowing Republicans to narrowly advance the bill to the floor.
But even after leaders agreed to changes in the measure, none of the four holdouts have committed to voting for the legislation. And one of them, Rep. Chip Roy, continues to criticize the bill.
Those are the positives. But it also (currently) leaves half the green new scam pumping, judges blocking deportations, Medicaid scams funding illegals & the able-bodied at the expense of non-expansion states like Texas, & massive deficits over first 5 years. Quite the dilemma. https://t.co/T7ox37llRz
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) May 19, 2025
Roy may have gotten some of what he wanted over the weekend, but he’s still clearly advocating for more adjustments, knowing leaders need his vote to pass the bill. And he’s far from the only conservative who wants the reconciliation measure to slash more spending.
“We’ve made progress in negotiations—but the budget reconciliation bill does not yet meet the moment,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, another holdout in the Budget Committee, wrote on X Monday.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Harris told reporters he’s a “hard no” on the legislation.
“I’m just not sure there’s anything the President could tell me tomorrow that would change my mind at this point,” Harris said.
Harris told reporters later he expects negotiations will need to extend beyond the Memorial Day deadline and that leadership’s target vote of this week is unrealistic.
The problem is, for basically every spending cut leaders agree to, there is a vulnerable Republican who grows more uncomfortable with the legislation. And the more kowtowing leaders do for conservatives, the more moderates also want changes.
“The fact is, we wouldn’t even be in this position right now if you didn’t have members in seats like mine who won,” moderate New York Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters Monday. “And so if they think we’re going to throw our constituents under the bus to appease them, that’s not happening.”
(There is also the Senate, which was already signaling discomfort with the legislation’s Medicaid cuts and growing more unlikely to swallow them by the minute, as House Republicans make the cuts even less palatable.)
Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers aren’t specifying what they’ve already amended in the bill, anticipating even more fine-tuning in the coming days.
Still, a House Rules Committee document paints an early picture of some of the changes, with Republicans quietly adding language that would provide food assistance for legal immigrants, revise permitting rules and impose new restrictions on Ukrainian and Afghan nationals in the U.S.
Initially, the bill barred legal immigrants from receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or premium tax credits, which help subsidize health care for low- and middle-income individuals. In the updated language, legal immigrants are included.
The updated language also specifically expands SNAP eligibility for Cuban nationals living in the United States.
But the bill cracks down on Ukrainians and Afghan nationals receiving benefits. Currently, those two groups are eligible to receive student aid under refugee status. The revised language, however, excludes them from student eligibility. People from those two countries would only be eligible to receive federal aid if they attain lawful permanent residency.
Another major update to the bill’s language is around the permitting process for new energy projects. The initial reconciliation bill allowed companies looking to build new oil and gas pipelines to pay thousands — or even millions — to get a permit or have their application considered. That became a major point of contention during the House Energy and Commerce Committee markup hearing last week, with Democrats accusing Republicans of setting up a “pay-to-play” system that rewards big fossil fuel companies.
In the updated version, that language is gone.
The newest version of the bill also would repeal a Biden-era rule that created stricter greenhouse gas emission standards for passenger cars and light trucks.
The Rules Committee is poised to consider a final version of the reconciliation bill at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, hoping to set up a floor vote for Thursday. And it’s clear from some of the things Republicans have said — and the changes that haven’t been made — that GOP lawmakers have quite a lot of work to do this week.
Asked about more moderate Republicans expressing concern about the bill quickly phasing out energy tax credits and speeding up Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied recipients, Speaker Johnson said Monday that Republicans were “going to have a lot of discussion amongst the conference over the next 48 hours.”
“And that’s all part of it,” Johnson continued, “so all I can say is stay tuned.”
Conservatives are still pushing to decrease the percentage of the federal government’s share of state Medicaid expenses, known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, and they want to roll back energy programs in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Roy told reporters Monday evening he’s still pushing for those reforms, adding that he’s not a firm no yet.
“Now we’ve made progress, and I can take a lot of these things, but we still have some work we got to do to get this all locked down,” Roy said. “I know it’s a multi-step process — House, Senate, — but we got to send the best product we can out of the House.”
Several moderates have been clear they won’t touch FMAP.
“FMAP is not on the table,” Lawler said.
Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who has been vocally opposed to substanital Medicaid cuts, is going to the White House to meet with staff Monday night.
“It seems like this continues to evolve by the hour, but FMAP is a non-starter,” Bresnahan told NOTUS. “So we’re not going to detract away from that. And there’s a large coalition that have very similar sentiments.”
Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California are still demanding more increases to the state and local tax deduction, with leaders seeming to increase their offer from $30,000 to $40,000. (The SALT deduction, which overwhelmingly benefits the richest 1% of Americans, currently allows homeowners to deduct up to $10,000 of their local property taxes from their federal tax bill.)
As of Monday evening, Republicans still didn’t have agreements on the FMAP or SALT components of the bill.
“We’re still listening to our members,” one leadership aide said at a briefing Monday morning. “FMAP and SALT are not resolved yet.”
One SALT caucus member fumed to NOTUS that Johnson didn’t talk to members of the group over the weekend, even though he was cutting deals with conservative hard-liners.
While Republicans are still far from a final agreement, lawmakers appear closer on one key sticking point: an implementation date for the Medicaid work requirements.
A GOP leadership aide said there is movement on pushing up the effective date for the work requirements from the current 2029 date — after the next presidential election — to 2026.
“The specifics of work requirements are ongoing, but there is broad agreement on getting the bill working as soon as possible,” the aide said.
Still, just moving up the implementation date may not be enough for conservatives. On Monday, Rep. Keith Self, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X that he is currently a “no” when it comes to a floor vote.
He named three unresolved issues with the legislation: that Republicans would effectively be “endorsing and owning Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion,” that the bill still delays spending cuts and that the legislation doesn’t fully repeal “the Green New Scam.”
“While I support passing President Trump’s agenda in the One, Big Beautiful Bill, Congress has more work to do. I remain a NO,” Self said.
Of course, Self can still change his mind. Just months ago, he was one of two House Republicans to oppose Johnson’s speakership. But after President Donald Trump called him, he changed his mind.
Trump is expected to attend the House GOP’s weekly meeting tomorrow morning, a source familiar with his plans told NOTUS.
He will almost certainly implore Republicans to stop negotiating and get behind the bill.
Still, when reporters asked Harris whether he’d back the bill if Trump asked him to today, he was bullish.
“I would convince him that this moment in history is when he reverses the spending trajectory of the country which he has run on,” the Freedom Caucus chair said.
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Reese Gorman, Riley Rogerson and Daniella Diaz are reporters at NOTUS.