WASHINGTON — The House Budget Committee will reconvene on Sunday night to advance the framework for President Donald Trump’s massive agenda after a group of GOP rebels tanked the framework in a committee vote on Friday.
The House Budget Committee voted 16-21 largely along party lines on the budget resolution, falling short of the majority needed to advance the bill to the full House floor next week.
Five Republicans voted against the bill during the committee markup as several of them made specific demands to leadership to alter the budget resolution.
Now, the committee will reconvene at 10 p.m. Sunday to try again as GOP leaders scramble to reach a deal with holdouts.
Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., all voted against the bill, citing disagreements with certain provisions on Medicaid and other spending cuts. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., also voted against the bill, but did so as a procedural move to ensure the framework could be considered again in committee at a later date.
The budget resolution combines Trump’s priorities on energy, border security, and national defense while also extending $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that are scheduled to expire by the end of the year.
The four main holdouts, all members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, began expressing their dissatisfaction with the bill on Thursday, telling reporters they would vote it down in committee until changes were made. However, GOP leaders went ahead with the procedural vote on Friday, noting they wanted to get members on the record.
“You never know until you call the question where people stand, which is the reason I called for a vote,” Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas., told reporters after the committee meeting. “You can’t accomplish anything in life without having deadlines and decisions. Today was a deadline and a decision, and it’s one of the decision points to get us to the successful passage of the reconciliation bill.”
Holdouts huddled with GOP leaders after the failed vote to discuss a path forward, with negotiations expected to last through the weekend.
The Budget Committee is the last stop before the budget framework can come to the full House floor for a vote. Eleven committees drafted individual portions of the reconciliation bill that the Budget Committee is now tasked with combining into one mega bill.
However, the Freedom Caucus holdouts withheld their support until they said they secured a written deal to accelerate the onset of Inflation Reduction Act repeals as well as an earlier implementation date of Medicaid work requirements.
One of the most significant changes proposed in the framework is to implement new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries. The bill would require able-bodied adults without dependents to work at least 80 hours a month or complete some other activity such as community service.
However, those requirements wouldn’t kick in until 2029 — a stipulation that hardline conservatives say must be moved up or else they won’t support the final package when it comes to the floor.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said on Thursday the timeline would likely be moved up, although it’s not clear how the Trump administration could do that.
“We’ve been talking to the Trump administration on a couple of questions that (the holdouts) had,” Scalise said on Friday. “We’re working on answers. Some of them we need to get answers from the Trump administration. But we’ve got a pretty clear idea of what the final pieces are, and we’re working through those right now.”
Members of the Freedom Caucus said they would stay in Washington, D.C., throughout the weekend to “continue negotiations to further improve the reconciliation package.”
Meanwhile, Trump is urging Republicans to stop delaying his agenda, releasing a statement on Friday morning to “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”
“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party,” he said in a post on Truth Social. “It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us.”
But some holdouts pushed back against that characterization, arguing their protests were not mere attention-grabbing attempts.
“This isn’t a grandstand,” Norman said. I don’t need to grandstand. … All we’re asking is — we’ll compromise somewhere, but we’re just not giving away the farm.”
Leaders hope negotiations will have progressed enough by Sunday night that the four holdouts will flip their votes to “yes.”
“The president’s been clear. He wants this done,” Arrington said. “They want it done at the earliest, practical time, and the commitment has been by Memorial Day. And we’ve been on pace, or ahead of schedule, to accomplish that.”
House Republican leaders hope to pass the full framework by the end of next week and hand it off to the Senate to begin its deliberations. However, there are several other factions within the Republican conference that still have disagreements with the bill that GOP leaders must iron out before bringing it to the floor.