WASHINGTON — House leadership pulled a Republican-led budget resolution from consideration as more than a dozen GOP lawmakers remain opposed to provisions implemented by their Senate colleagues.
The House was scheduled to vote on the budget blueprint on Wednesday evening when it was abruptly pulled from the schedule moments before it was set to be considered. House leaders kept the previous vote open for more than 80 minutes as they continued negotiations with holdouts, but those talks appeared to do little to move the needle.
“We’re going to try to move this tomorrow,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said. “This has been a very constructive process.”
The delayed vote is the latest escalation in a months-long battle between House and Senate Republicans over how to structure the package to push through President Donald Trump’s policies on the border, energy and tax reform in one fell swoop.
The Senate passed its version just last week, making some key changes to the initial resolution backed by the House. However, many of those alterations left fiscal hawks in the House irate.
“It is NOT just a different budget we have to ‘work out’ with the Senate – it amended our House budget to put its own weak instructions in that are the ONLY instructions that will matter when we actually write the bill,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said in a post on X. “The Math Does Not Add Up.”
The main cause of contention is a provision in the Senate blueprint calling for just $4 billion in spending cuts — far below the $1.5 trillion marker in the House budget. Although Senate leaders have said the number acts as a minimum target, that has done little to assuage some fiscal hawks.
“Look, if the Senate is really serious they can produce, have them send over their folks,” Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., said on Tuesday. “Give me their senior budget staff and bring a calculator.”
A group of holdouts met with Senate leaders on Wednesday evening to hash out a deal, with some defectors demanding a written agreement for the Senate to pursue deeper spending cuts in the final package.
A number of those hardliners remained opposed to the budget resolution even as they arrived for votes on Wednesday evening, prompting Johnson to pull more than a dozen holdouts off the House floor for a last-minute meeting.
That meeting lasted roughly 82 minutes and lawmakers emerged without an agreement.
“So we’re going to talk about maybe going to conference with the Senate or adding an amendment, but we’re going to make that decision,” Johnson said. “We are going to continue to move forward.”
Johnson said they would likely vote on the bill Thursday morning. That puts GOP leaders in a time crunch as lawmakers are expected to leave town on Friday and aren’t scheduled to return until after the Easter holiday.
House leaders have privately considered keeping lawmakers in session through the weekend to sort out disagreements, although a final decision has not been made.
“I’m not ruling it out,” Johnson said on Monday.
Some lawmakers said they are willing to stay in Washington until the budget is resolved — no matter how long it takes.
“That’s the key issue here,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who is currently a nay on the resolution, told the Deseret News. “There’s nothing stopping us from that. There’s nothing stopping to call us in this weekend and during next week. It’s not in stone that we’ve got to leave here. And if leadership thinks it’s that important to get us all on board, let’s do it.”