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Hello, friends. Happy Memorial Day weekend. This week marked a major win for the Republican Party, but it didn’t come easily.
The House passed the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” in the wee hours of Thursday after more than seven hours of debate on the floor — and that doesn’t include the nearly 22-hour hearing beforehand that lasted the entirety of Wednesday.
Needless to say, it was a week of big developments, little sleep, and negotiations that lasted until the very last minute.
But what’s next?
The Big Idea
Trump’s budget heads to the Senate — where changes await
After weeks of marathon hearings, hourslong negotiations, and last-minute changes to the budget framework, the House finally got President Donald Trump’s agenda passed in a razor-thin vote around 7 a.m. EDT on Thursday.
But the hard part might just be beginning.
The budget resolution must now head to the Senate for consideration, and some senators are already hinting at major changes to the framework before they can support it. (And, to freshen up knowledge on the process: if the Senate makes any changes — no matter how small — it must go to back to the House and pass again before it can be signed by Trump.)
There are a lot of factors at play here, and the drama won’t really start to unfold until Congress returns on June 3 from the Memorial Day recess.
But the crux of the issue is this: A substantial faction of conservatives in the House who are part of the Freedom Caucus made a number of demands in order to get their support for the budget resolution. Without their help, the bill would have failed on the House floor.
But those changes took weeks to negotiate — and they are unlikely to go over well with more moderate Republicans in the Senate.
For example, two major demands the Freedom Caucus made was to make deeper spending cuts to Medicaid and to fully repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes several clean energy tax credits. But there are some GOP senators who might be wary of the changes — including Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, who supports those green energy credits — which could cause some heartburn.
“All of which means this: If Congress cuts funding for Medicaid benefits, Missouri workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close. It’s that simple,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote in a New York Times op-ed warning against Medicaid cuts. “And that pattern will replicate in states across the country.”
On the other hand, you have some Republicans in the Senate who want more spending cuts.
“I’m hoping now we’ll actually start looking at reality,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on Thursday. “I know everybody wants to go to Disney World, but we just can’t afford it.”
House Republicans knew the risks of spending so much time debating budget provisions that could be later stripped out — but for some, that might have been the point.
“I think after seeing how painful of a process this is and how difficult it is to get anything through this side, I think that will send a strong message in the Senate that you can’t really change it,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a member of the Freedom Caucus, told me this week.
Burlison has been someone who often warns about getting “jammed” by the Senate — a colloquial term referring to when the House has to just swallow whatever the upper chamber passes — so I pressed him on that a little further.
I asked: “After all this, you think once y’all pass it, they’ll just take it?”
Burlison: “I think so.”
To my surprise, a number of other House conservatives had the same belief.
Fellow Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., told me: “I think if we send them over a conservative package, they actually will adopt it, because the Senate’s position right now is more conservative than the House.”
When I asked about concerns that the Senate could reject some of the conservative changes the House made, Ogles said: “Their posture is more conservative than ours so if they were to change it, it would be an improvement.”
Remember: Senate Republicans have a similar margin that House GOP leaders have had to deal with the last few weeks. They can lose up to three GOP senators before the bill fails, assuming all Democrats vote against it.
The plan is to get the framework through the Senate, back to the House if needed, and on Trump’s desk by the Fourth of July.
It’s an ambitious timeline, to be sure. We’ll see if they can pull off a miracle.
Stories driving the week
- Joe Biden returns to the forefront: House Republicans spent much of the last Congress investigating the Biden family — and that trend continues into this administration. The House Oversight Committee announced it would continue investigations into the Biden administration, the former president’s cognitive decline, and his use of the autopen (something that several presidents, including Trump, have used in the past). The committee sent requests on Thursday for interviews with the former president’s doctor and former White House aides.
- Stablecoin history: The Senate passed legislation this week to implement the first-ever regulation framework for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that is considered more secure because it is tied to an underlying asset. Democrats initially threatened to block the bill until they came to an agreement with Republicans this week to include language that would extend ethics standards to special government employees (read: Elon Musk, while he is in his administration position).
- Democrat charged with assault: A House Democrat was charged with two counts of assaulting, resisting, and impeding an officer during a protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on May 9. Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., has since been released but now faces a resolution from Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., to be removed from the House. That’s unlikely to happen, but could raise tensions between the parties.
Congress fatigue
This week, House members were awake for at least 24 hours — some even longer! — as they tried to pass this big, beautiful bill.
The House Rules Committee met for the longest period of time, with its hearing lasting almost 22 hours with one short 10-minute recess. It’s probably a record for the committee, although no one is quite sure as the panel is the longest-standing committee in Congress and we don’t have records going all the way back to its creation in 1789.
As you can imagine, everyone was quite tired. Your author was dependent on Celsius energy drinks and afternoon Diet Cokes to stay awake.
And I’m here to confirm the rumors: Lawmakers, they’re just like us.
I caught quite a few lawmakers nodding off in committee hearings this week, giving some vindication to Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, who went viral when he nodded off in a hearing last week.
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., for example, fell asleep several times during the Rules Committee meeting and had to be shaken awake during amendment votes late Wednesday evening.
Norman later revealed to me and a few other reporters he had only gotten two hours of sleep between Tuesday and Wednesday, and didn’t get to go to bed until after the bill passed early Thursday morning. Sweet dreams, congressman.
And some members even missed the big, beautiful vote because they fell asleep. No, really.
Two Republicans missed the vote early Thursday morning, including New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said had fallen asleep.
“Andrew Garbarino did not make it in time. He fell asleep in the back, no kidding,” Johnson told reporters.
That could’ve been drastic for Republicans because the bill passed in a 215-214 vote — a razor-thin margin that offered GOP leaders no room for error.
Shout-out to Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, who stayed awake on the House floor and offered a speech during debate — and on her birthday, no less.
Now it’s the Senate’s turn … and they are known for their overnight vote-a-ramas, so maybe we’ll catch a few more snoozers in the coming weeks.
Quick Hits
From the Hill: Republicans won’t sell Utah’s public lands in Trump’s budget. … Congress considers reining in Trump’s firing powers. … Senate chaplain prays for Biden after cancer diagnosis.
From the White House: Trump signs bipartisan bill criminalizing revenge porn. … Prayer service at Pentagon sparks religious freedom debate. … Trump, South African president clash in White House meeting over ‘genocide’
From the courts: The Supreme Court deadlocked over a first-of-its-kind religious charter school. … SCOTUS returns Maine lawmaker’s right to vote after post about transgender athlete. … SCOTUS approved largest immigration status revocation in decades.
What’s next
The House and Senate will leave town for a weeklong recess to celebrate the Memorial Day holiday. When they get back, the Senate gets to join the “big, beautiful fun.”
In the meantime, I’ll be back in Utah next week while lawmakers return for the district work period. I’ll be checking in with lawmakers to see what they’re up to when not on Capitol Hill.
As always, feel free to reach out to me by email with story ideas or questions you have for lawmakers. And follow me on X for breaking news and timely developments from the Hill.